


Hero's Torch

by XIX



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abduction, Cannibalism, Canon Gay Relationship, Gay, Gay Male Character, Imprisonment, M/M, Murder, Rape, Schadenfreude, Sexual Slavery, Sexual Violence, Space Opera, XIX, gay men, hero's torch
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-07
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2017-12-31 18:04:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 47,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1034745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XIX/pseuds/XIX
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Violently gay, violently violent, spaceships, improbable costumes, the opposite of a moral, true love.  </p><p>Blasphemous. Not safe for anything or anywhere.</p><p>Addictive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hero's Torch--Part 1--Dystopia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Missing Chapter 3 has been restored. Sorry, dears. So if you read this already, er, you missed about 30,000 words. I blame AO3.

dys·to·pi·a (dîs-to¹pê-e) noun  
1\. An imaginary place or state in which the condition of life is extremely bad, as from deprivation, oppression, or terror.  
2\. A work describing such a place or state: “dystopias such as Brave New World"

**children**

 

It was almost silent there, in the basement of the church. Faded chains of colored paper hung in loops from the low ceiling, and copies of pages from Christian coloring books were tacked to bulletin boards on the peeling walls. 

It was almost silent, except for the hum of electric fans and the crying of about thirty children.

It always happened, the crying. They would be sitting on parent’s laps, clinging to hands, some of them worrying at bottles or toys. There was no noise, nothing happening at all, only waiting--but without fail, one would start to cry.

Then two, then ten. 

Sometimes there were mothers, fathers crying too, pale and shaking, endlessly hushing their children, eyes moving frantically from door to child to door again.

Oberon stood outside the door. One of his attendants moved to open it for him; he froze the man with a slight motion of his hand. He stood in the hallway, listening to the muffled terror beyond the door. He turned so that none of them could see his eyes drifting closed, his lips pressing tight to keep the corners from turning upwards. 

He could hear his entourage behind him, fidgeting almost soundlessly, one of them daring to make a slight cough. Their impatience was irrelevant to him. He waited, until he was absolutely still, inside and out, then turned his head, and ordered with his eyes. Shaking, his attendant opened the door.

The Septarch never touched anything. 

Not here.

He stepped inside, flanked by his bodyguards. They were only there for the sake of appearance. He didn't need them. No one had tried to physically attack him since the incident on the Lazarus outpost sixteen years earlier. He had taken care of that one himself, before his guards had even known what was happening.

The crying stopped, as if someone had thrown a switch. He allowed himself a thin quick smile at that. It always stopped, exactly that way. All the eyes in the room dropped to the floor. No one looked at him. No one moved. They didn't dare.

"All of them passed?" he asked. The question was unnecessary, and deliberately directed at no one in particular. He did this to enjoy the silent not-me struggle among his servants. There was only so much time, too. God forbid he should physically turn to them and ask again. An offense like that always meant blood.

"Yes, Lord Septarch. These are the ones that have been found suitable in the preliminary tests," one of them stammered finally. 

Oberon did not look at him. He felt the man waiting, and he made a small cruel motion as if he might speak again. He was certain they weren't even breathing. 

He nodded, finally. There was, of course, no sigh of relief. They knew better than that.

The little family groups were seated in folding chairs lining the walls, little clumps of mother-father-child. The trembling set in and passed around the room like a chain reaction. He noted that. It was a machine, this world, turning in perfect sync at his slightest decision. Everything was still exactly as it should be.

Except, of course, that there was nothing here that fascinated him. He had seen these same children, hundreds of times, or their twins, and the repetition had bleached this of any amusement it had once held.

He tired of the game, suddenly, feeling the odd sense of deflation that meant he had better finish this, and quickly.

He made his choices almost at random, not even gesturing, trusting in his servants to follow the motion of his eyes. “This one. That one. These two,” he said, already turning to leave. 

The same guard that had spoken to him ran to open the door wider for him, desperate that not even the cuff of his pants brush against the wood.

The screams were beginning. 

Behind him, a woman collapsed, making a sound like shorn metal, her face buried in her husband's lap, her hands hanging limp, brushing the tile floor. Her little girl was the first one he had chosen, a tiny thing with white-blonde hair and curious eyes. He already knew he wouldn’t use her in any significant way. He had chosen for the joy of being able to do so.

The Septarch was escorted through the hallway, out a back door and into the sleek waiting electric car. He never took his hands from the pockets of his leather coat. He never needed to. Not here.

He did not turn his head to watch the transport being loaded behind him. He had never been interested in background details.

Cayle was sitting beside him, already pressing pills into his hand. He took them, waved away the offer of water. "I hate this planet," he muttered, staring out the one-way window.

"There's only one more."

The Septarch nodded.

"Did you want to stay here, or--"

"No," he said, shortly. "Just get me to the spaceport."

He leaned his forehead against the synthetic glass. Maybe he would arrange some kind of contest, a game of wits or persistence or creativity for the little ones to struggle through. Something more amusing than all that waiting and crying. Something that might fascinate him, if only for a while.

 

 **isolation**

 

Two hundred miles away, an act of sabotage was in progress.

"Radio...live transmission,” Leander muttered to himself, around a mouthful of wires.

He was a narrow sculpture of bone and thin young muscle, and he was doing his best to squeeze himself against the wall, where the shadows were thickest. He knew he had two minutes and twelve seconds until the security robot passed by again, plenty of time, but there was no predicting a passing junkie or cop. That was up to the random. The only way to combat the random was to have a plan, and stick to it. So he kept his head down and kept singing, because the song was two minutes long, and when he reached the end of it he would have twelve seconds to escape.

"Listen to the silence...let it ring on..."

His bag was pulling hard on his shoulder. He spent a precious two seconds adjusting it, pulled on the damn too-short wire slowly and firmly until it surrendered a half-inch of slack.

"Bang," he muttered, grinning, and touched copper to copper, and a spark stung his wrist where the gloves didn’t reach. He heard a whirring deep inside the building, and the metal security shield over the windows around the corner rolled itself up with a screech.

He skidded around the corner, smashed the window with his bag, grabbed as many assorted circuit boards and passcards as he could, stuffed them into his poor abused backpack, fumbled into his pocket, grabbed the carefully rigged gadget, and stuck it on a jutting shard of supposedly unbreakable glass. All of this was more or less one practiced motion.

He ducked into the alley on the other side of the building, groping past the stolen merchandise in his bag for a smooth cylinder. He knocked off the plastic cap and sprayed three sloppy sixes on the brick wall, in dripping neon red, dropped the can and scaled the wall at the end of the alley. It was topped with barbed wire that had long since rusted into a pathetic joke. It smeared his school uniform with orange, and tore the knee of his pants. That was fine. Once, he’d torn open the inside of his wrist, and had staggered home with his sock tied around the wound.

He ran two blocks, checked his watch. He waited, counting under his breath. He was sure the robot would be in the blast zone, too. The state police could have that little favor for free. It wouldn’t bother them much. The factories churned the damn copbots out by the hundreds. They were designed and built by the lowest bidder, and it was not uncommon for them to fall out of the air and lie sparking and twitching on the sidewalk, shrieking garbled codes and sending all kinds of film to any computers within sensor range.

Radio. Live transmission.

It wasn’t much of a bang. Just a kind of a whoosh, and a sort of pressure that vaguely ruffled his hair. No alarm. They deserved it, having a goddamned system that was ten years out of date. Wire, for God’s sake. Who in the hell still used wire?

He was breathing hard, not really out of breath, just running hard and fast on adrenaline and triumph. It was almost too easy. He almost felt sorry for the idiots. 

District Seven Technological Supply was over. 

He had hacked the school computer system, and while aimlessly sifting through the payout records, he'd found out that these were the bastards that supplied all the schools in the quadrant.

The Council would not have been amused to learn that the Tri-Six Terrorist was a fourteen-year-old boy.

Leander ducked and turned and doubled back. He let himself edge into a fast walk, took a side trip into another alley and pulled the two bricks out of his bag and tossed them in a recycle dump. 

He checked his watch again. Damn.

He had to be at school in less than four hours, and it was an hour's walk home.

“Fucking cops. It would have been nice to have my damn bike,” he muttered to himself. He’d built a kind of bastardized motor scooter for exactly this kind of mission, with completely silent engines, and on his test run the police had spotted him and seized it as an unauthorized vehicle. He hadn’t even known about that law.

He unzipped the outer pocket of his bag, pulled out four pills, and chewed them. It left his mouth gritty and tasting of sulfur, but he sang anyway.

"Waiting for our sign....sign...”

Before the Revolution, the place he was walking through would have been called Italy.

 

He crept into the house, tiptoed up the stairs. One of them creaked, and he froze, waiting to hear the chime of his parents’ door opening. He counted to one hundred. Nothing. 

He made it into his room and keyed the door locked behind him, dropped his bag into his battered chair and fell across his bed.

Safe.

He peeled off the leather gloves, reached over and buried them under a pile of dirty school uniforms, wriggled out of his clothes and hid them in the same place. He had convinced his mother that the rust stains—and occasional bloodstains—were due to his habit of poking around in junkyards. She knew his predilection for building things that could have been called machines or sculptures, depending on how well they worked, and whether she believed him or not, she didn’t question him about it.

His room was a lair, reeking of sandalwood and pot. He had drawn and painted on every inch of the walls, the ceiling, a solid mural of blacks, browns, red and gray and flashes of occasional magenta and green. It was more or less abstract, with occasional eyes, teeth, snakes, and flames, except for a strange angel over his bed. The bed was a snarl of mismatched sheets, a Republic of Earth flag crumpled at the footboard, the blue cross on a white background twisted into a crooked glyph.

It was the only place on Earth that was easy on his eyes.

The drugs were playing a quick mean voodoo drum in his skull. He groped under his bed for a little gizmo that was supposed to be a perpetual motion machine, managed to break off one of the counterweights, and dropped it again with a sigh. 

He stared up at the mutant angel on the ceiling over his bed, reached over his head for his earphones, and waited. He'd programmed the computer to turn on his stereo three minutes after he keyed his room closed.

The music slammed into him, violent counterpoint to the headache unfolding in his temples. He kicked at the flag, squashing it even farther down until it was crammed between the bedframe and the mattress, keeping company with a compass, two computer disks, and the gas mask he'd outgrown when he was eight.

He closed his eyes and tried to wind himself into a dream, something with a lot of explosions, with his least favorite teachers and the school security force as key victims in the scenario. It unraveled quickly, into a barrage of disconnected images, and a vague plan to try and hack the comm net for the quadrant, and link it into his stereo. He drifted off in a spiral of still shots, of his Humanities teacher lying in a hallway with her hands crammed against her ears, while the school’s public address system blasted the ancient rock group Ministry at decibel levels that were inhumanly cruel.

Two hours later, his alarm beeped in his ears.

He dragged himself out of bed, pulled on his last clean uniform, emptied the stolen equipment out of his bag and stuffed it under his bed. He ate an amphetamine, wandered into the bathroom and brushed his teeth, and snuck down the stairs as quietly as he could with his eyes half-closed.

He got lucky. He stumbled out of the house without either of his parents seeing him.

There was a small saccharine panic in his chest after the door had closed behind him. Sunlight was splattering down on him. So much space. So many eyes.

He had his backpack, made beautiful with electrical tape, with wire and obscure stickers and black graffiti. It was juju.

He was safe.

He groped in the maw of his bag for the mask, buckled it over his head. The air through it was bland and redundant; it, too, was begging to be unraveled. Hydrogen. Nitrogen. Carbon monoxide. 

He missed the smell of gasoline, illegal now for years, that he had found sometimes when he was small, in junkyards. When he was three they’d had a neighbor who had an antique car with rubber wheels and a gasoline engine. The man and his car were gone, now, the man long since sent to reconditioning camp, the car dismembered for scrap metal.

 _All this, and the planet is still toxic. We might as well have kept the gasoline,_ Leander thought, and breathed in deep and quickly, listening to the hiss of the filter in his mask.

 

**blue murder machine**

 

When Leander was twelve, he’d been allowed to choose an elective class. He'd picked Section 47--Creative Arts. He’d expected the scheduling counselor to give him some script about the class being full, or the time conflicting with his required credits. Instead, she’d keyed in his code, and printed his schedule and handed it to him without a word.

He remembered walking in and just standing in the doorway of the classroom, amazed. No desks. No computers. There were tables, with two chairs at each one, across from one another, and at each table there were two huge sheets of real white paper. Beside that, there was a box of colored pencils, the good kind that made thick rich lines, with soft lead that didn't scratch. 

Each seat had an index card with a name. He found his, tucked his bag under his feet, and chewed his lip, impatiently. The kids came in, one by one. A skinny kid with hair the color of dirt sat across from him. He glanced at Leander disdainfully. Leander gave him such a vicious look in return that he looked away.

The teacher came in, a heavy woman with her hair twisted into a lump at the nape of her neck, in standard issue teacher's gray. "Well, class,” she said. “For your first day, let’s have a little fun. I want you to draw something from the Bible. It can be anything--Daniel and the lions, Adam and Eve, whatever you'd like."

Well. He’d expected that. There was plenty in the Bible he could stand to draw. There was enough material in Revelation alone to keep him busy for the entire semester.

Leander had already picked up a bright blue pencil.

He drew without stopping, without erasing, for almost an hour. The classroom vanished, and he was in a place where there was nothing but the paper, and the evolving lines. He wasn’t thinking, wasn’t even drawing consciously. It was one of the best times, when it just worked perfectly, when he wasn’t creating so much as he was translating.

The class was almost over, and the teacher was going around the room, looking at each kid’s work, offering suggestions, praise. He vaguely knew that there was more talking than there had been. He didn’t look up. He started drawing more quickly, knowing that he would lose a lot of it once the bell rang.

She stopped behind Leander’s desk. He didn't notice her, and he didn’t stop drawing until she snatched the pencil out of his hand.

The class was instantly silent.

"What is this?" she demanded, her voice shaking.

It was Jesus. The messiah was in a strange costume of dark shiny blue. He had black lipstick, and was bolted to a steel cross, with rivets through his wrists and ankles. His face and chest were studded with circuit boards. There were hundreds of meticulously drawn wires invading his flesh, a tiny blue wound at each point of penetration.

The teacher grabbed Leander’s chin and forced his head back. “Is that supposed to be funny? How dare you draw something like that?"

Leander was shaking. He had never had a teacher yell at him in all his life. He had no idea what he’d even done wrong. Was she jealous? Had the class already ended, with him just sitting here?

He opened his mouth, and said, "I'm not finished. Can I have my pencil back?"

She let him go, drew back her hand and slapped him so hard he nearly fell out of his chair. It erased any coherent thought left in his brain. No one had ever hit him before, not outside of street fights with other kids. He couldn’t figure out whether he was supposed to hit her back, or what.

He was looking down at his sketch again, and her hand came down over his shoulder. _Wrinkled_ it. Snatched it.

He sat very still. Everyone was staring at him. None of them dared to say anything.

And Leander exploded.

He put his hands under the table, and slammed it upward, as hard as he could. It flipped over completely, crushing the kid across from him to the floor in a tangled blizzard of table, chair, and paper. Colored pencils clattered against the tile. He did this on his way to standing up. "That's mine--"

The teacher grabbed him, yanked his arm so hard that pain flared in the socket of his shoulder, into his ribs. She dragged him over his chair and out of the room, holding his sketch in her free hand away from her body, as though it might get her dirty.

Knocking over the table had earned him a beating on his bare skin, with a wooden paddle an inch thick. It was delivered in front of the entire school, after his sketch had been displayed and loudly condemned as Satanic. The bruises ran from his waist to the backs of his knees, and they had taken more than a month to fade.

It still left a bright raw fury in his stomach. He could still see them, a sea of faces, as he stood there watching the principal wave his sketch, shouting. Another man had been holding Leander hard by the shoulder with one hand. He'd had the paddle in his other hand.

That was the first time he’d thought _boy, would I ever like to smash bang you back once or twice._

The drawing had earned him six months of priority counseling. This was a pleasant State euphemism for psychological torture. For one hundred and eighty days, eleven or twelve hours a day, he had been locked in a room with four of them, all of them shouting at him at once. After the first time he covered his ears they taped his hands to the chair. 

In the name of Jesus. 

The brainwashing after that was a vague white blur. Hell on Earth. The only reason it hadn’t broken him, he figured, was because they had been making no logical sense at all. Circular reasoning, and all of it led back to Jesus, and that would make him see his sketch again, burning in the air just in front of his eyes. Jesus, the entire goddamned reason he’d been there in the first place.

They had put him on various drugs, on doses so heavy that he had barely been able to hold his head up, let alone understand anything they were saying. Finally, he had taken to saying, sure, okay, fine, no matter what they had just said to him. He lied his way through a written evaluation they’d given him, and they’d let him go. Cured.

He sighed. The vengeance fix of blowing up the Tech supply was already wearing thin. Maybe tonight. If he ate a little more speed...

He walked towards the school, towards eight hours of faded women hammering at him with incomprehensible facts, or even worse, morals and ethics and never-ending ravings about Christ.

 _I want more than this,_ he thought.

**hypocrisy**

 

The school was a crouched, ugly tumor, fenced in with spirals of vicious wire decorating the upper edge of ten-foot rusted fences. Almost all of the gates were locked, excessive loops of chain the color of shit wound around the bars, into a thick clot where the padlocks were hopelessly choked. You had to go in the front gate, past a little clump of guards. Leander wondered who it was they thought actually wanted to get inside.

He remembered just in time, and took off his watch and stuffed it into his bag. You weren't allowed to wear any kind of jewelry except the government-issue wristunits, a combination of watch, ID, and locator device that everybody had to have. He’d smashed his again in a not-so-accident in physical training section, and he’d conveniently given the wrong address for them to ship the replacement to. So far, they hadn't caught on.

He slunk along to his first class. School started with homeroom, with prayers and roll call and usually the meting out of punishments. He passed a group of girls conversing in horrified whispers. "Tri-Six...again, last night...they say he’s from a cult in Quadrant Eight...he did it because last night was the anniversary of the death of this devil-worshiper. Crowley."

Was it really? Leander bit back a grin. He made a mental note to search for Crowley info on his computer. One of the girls must have seen his expression, because they all got quiet and stared at him. He ignored them. If he hadn’t known cloning was illegal, he would have sworn that they were all copies of the same shallow, empty-headed bitch. They were the same in every school.

He made it to his desk in homeroom, but he didn't even get to turn his computer on.

The teacher didn’t even let them all get settled before she started reading off a handscreen. "The following students will report immediately to the Admin of Health."

Leander felt something collapse in the general vicinity of his throat. He just knew.

"Isaiah Lamkin...Dean Foreman...Leander Schaiden..."

He sighed. The rest of the little bastards were too busy snickering at him to hear it. They hated him. He was That Kid, the one who looked at Weird Stuff on his computer, drew in the margins of his notebooks, and was Probably Some Kind of Devil Worshiper.

That was all right. He hated them too. 

I'd rather be weird than stupid.

He shouldered his bag, and slouched his way out into the corridor.

 

Sixteen kids sat in a room. Every other desk. Leander was told to put his bag under his seat, and he was given one of those answer sheets where you had to fill in the little bubbles with a pencil. The test they gave him was ten pages long, badly Xeroxed. Some teacher he had never seen before stood up in front of the class and put his hand on a disk copy of the Earth Standard Bible

“I swear that these tests will be absolutely without punitive consequences, no matter what your answers may be. So help me God."

Leander frowned. That was weird. So he could write fuck off and these bastards couldn’t do anything about it? It had to be true. If you lied on a Bible you would be stoned to death. Or worse. And four cameras—one in each corner of the room—had just seen the teacher swear.

“These tests are for the purpose of research to improve public service in our schools. Please be completely honest and answer every question. There is no time limit."

I don't like this, he thought.

He flipped open the little packet, skimmed through the questions.

_Do you ever take illegal drugs?_

_Do you masturbate?_

_Do you hate your mother or father?_

_Do you hate your teachers?_

_Do you believe in God?_

All the questions were like that, yes or no answers, until the last four pages. There was only one question at the top of each page, with blank lines filling up the rest of the space. Essay questions. Great.

_How do you feel about the Church?_

_What do you think will happen when you die?_

_If you could kill someone and get away with it, would you? How would you do it?_

I don’t like this at all, Leander thought, biting his lip.

He started coloring in yesses and nos.

 

When he was finished he handed the weird teacher his papers, and was given a pass back to class. He shuffled through the rest of his day in a daze. The only high point was in physical training. They were learning archery. 

 

When he got home he didn't even have a chance to key open the door. His mother opened it for him, and stood there staring at him. Her eyes were red and swollen, as if she had been crying. "Leander, get in here." 

"What happened?"

They were in the kitchen, and she turned away from him and covered her face. "Sit down."

Oh, god, they know, he thought. Visions of prison, or worse, a reconditioning hospital. Again. Being strapped to a bed screamed at, prayed over. The Tri-Six Terrorist, at the mercy of the state. He ran through a mental list of his crimes. Vandalism. Arson. Theft. Heresy. Hacking. Drugs.

How the fuck had they caught him?

His mother leaned over the table. Soren Schaiden looked more like Leander’s sister than his mother. She had his green eyes, his straight espresso-colored hair--and his temper. He leaned back. Strategic retreat.

"Leander, did you take some kind of test today? In school?"

She didn’t sound mad. Weird. "Yeah. Some kind of ethics kind of a thing. It was stupid," he said, carefully. "Why? Did they telecomm you? Did I fail it, or something?"

"No,” she said her face very white, like her bones were showing through it. "No, Leander, you didn't fail."

 

After that, his mom and dad shut themselves in the living room and locked him out. 

Leander paced, creeping as close to the door as he could. He caught snatches of conversation, his mother mostly.

"...just a child...you know how he is...there has to be a way to get them to let him..."

They did know. Fuck. 

He went into his room and hacked the intercom into the living room.

"Paul, he probably said all those things as a joke. He's just like I was at his age, just mad at everything with something to prove. This can't happen. If we tell them he was in recon--"

“They already know that, Soren. That's probably why he got picked in the first place."

"But this is crazy!"

She was crying. And shouting. Leander was feeling strange, like he might sneeze or choke or something. Would she go to jail too, for what he had done? And the fucking SCHOOL, full of fucking LIARS, tomorrow he was going to shut them down for at least a month, they had sworn on camera on a Bible, if they could cheat, if they really could, cheat, it was

over.

“This can’t be happening!" she was shouting at Paul. "Why the fuck do they let him do this? We have fucking ships, airplanes, surface-to-space missiles, all those goddamned satellites...and they’re still letting him do this? Why the fuck don't they just kill the bastard?"

Soren dissolved into sobbing.

Leander swallowed hard. He had never, ever heard her use the word fuck before. Never. Not even the time when he was six and he'd gashed open his forehead, and the car had run out of charge on the way to the hospital. 

Missiles? Was she mad that they hadn't shot at him? What the hell was going on?

None of this made any damn sense.

He stood in the middle of his room, furious at himself. How had he screwed up so utterly? Where had he slipped up? How the fuck had they caught him? Had they caught him? Was this about the Tri-Six, or about that damn test, or both?

It didn't matter now. No matter which it was about, he’d been nailed for something. He was headed either for recon or prison.

No. Think. You can’t just go crazy over this, there has to be an answer. If you lose it, you’re done. Now think.

He was standing in the middle of his room, with his hands in his hair like someone in a bad play. He took a deep breath. Think.

It couldn’t be the Tri-Six. He knew damn well what the state’s reaction to terrorism was. They would have arrested him already, or shot him as soon as he was out in the open. It had to have something to do with that goddamned psychology test. 

This test will be absolutely without punitive consequences.

“Bullshit,” he muttered to himself. It had to be recon. In their fucked-up self-righteous delusions, they didn’t consider that punishment. They considered it…health care.

He made a little scared sound, without meaning to. Not again. Recon. What little he could remember about the last time still gave him screaming nightmares. All he knew was that it had been a sterile, white wasteland, and it had begun to seem that he had always been there, that escape was impossible, because there was nowhere else.

He wouldn’t go back. He wouldn’t survive it.

He had so much to do, and space only knew how little time.

He started making a pile on his bed, of everything he had that he had to ditch. He was too frantic to do this intelligently, and he was making a big mess. It didn’t matter. A small mountain of illegal disks, books, and tiny cellophane packets of weed began to form. 

He kept out a few black-market disks of old-earth music, his game disks, and his journal. He stuffed those into his black vinyl backpack. 

He wasn’t preparing to run away. There was no point in even trying that. They had him. There was nowhere to run to.

He piled up everything on his Earth flag, tied up the corners to make a lumpy sack. He would burn that. Those were things that could conceivably be traced to others. He didn't want that. He only kept the things he knew only he could be blamed for. 

He had to have a way to get rid of the stuff.

He called down to the living room. It beeped twice, and Paul finally answered it. "What is it, son?"

"Um...am I still going to school tomorrow?"

Paul sighed, deeply. The utterly horrible thing was that it sounded as though he had been crying, too. "Yes. Same time as always."

"Okay,” Leander said, and he couldn’t think of anything to follow that, so he clicked the comm off.

Good. He could ditch the bag on the way. He pushed his bag of evidence over, lay on his back and fumbled his headphones on. He scavenged two Valium from his backpack and dry-swallowed them. 

He wasn't going to recon. That much, he knew.

He would run until they had him cornered, and force them to shoot him down. Maybe, if he got lucky, he could rig an explosion or something, take a few of the cops out with him. Even though there would be plenty more to take their places.

That’s bullshit, Leander, said the little sarcastic night-voice that made him wonder if he was going crazy. You're no hero. You don't have the balls to do that.

Yeah? Getting shot is painless. The laser just punches you full of holes. You die. You're right, I have no balls whatsoever. I'm a coward. I can't face recon again. I don’t know how I survived it the first time. 

He waited for the voice. It didn't answer.

The drug slithered blue tendrils around his fear, unfolded his rage, and dragged him into a heavy, suffocating sleep.

**precursor**

Leander woke up afraid to open his eyes. For a minute, he was certain he was in recon already. That would have been just like the State, to take him while he was sleeping. He reached above his head, felt the shelves there, knocked a handscreen down onto his chest. Still his room. He got up, feeling disconnected and numb. This must be how people feel living in a war zone, he thought.

He went downstairs, expecting the police to jump out at him at any moment. It was only morning, another one showing him the same morning things he always watched. His father, Paul, drinking coffee. The uninteresting walls of his house. 

It should at least have had the decency to be different. Innovative. After all, this might be his last morning on Earth.

Leander slunk into his chair, pulled it discreetly away from his father. He folded his arms, examined his fingernails. He never ate in the mornings. Usually, he just sat there waiting for the usual lecture.

His father was different today. 

Paul was an engineer, doing some kind of job that vaguely had to do with designing the tunnels for the underground transit. Usually he pulled up the news reports, read to Leander from the screen, and added his own editorial on The Way The World Is These Days. 

Today he sat, his large heavy frame oddly hunched, and stared at the newspaper on the screen, but his eyes didn't move, and he didn’t click the page-down button. He took tiny nervous sips of his coffee, and no editorial appeared to be forthcoming.

He knows. And he's so ashamed he won't even look at me.

He was mad, suddenly. They could at least tell him what the hell was going on. He wished he could unravel his father, possibly, to see if there were new colors underneath, some bright fascination lying wasted under his blank skin. If he knew that geography maybe he could read Paul's mind.

He imagined virgin reams of color, hidden by skin from all eyes for a lifetime, suddenly in his sight. To discover some secret. As if the universe had any secrets.

As if he really wanted to know what was going to happen.

"Leander," Paul said. 

Captive, the boy sighed and waited. His brain was already writing the script. Be a man. Face up to what you've done. Or, worse, you weren't raised that way.

His father paused, seeming to search for words. Leander chewed one of his fingernails and wished he was still in bed.

"Is there school today?"

Leander wondered how he should know. Half the time even the school didn’t know when the warning broadcasts had gone out. The levels of poison in the air rose and fell by the hour, and the boy never turned to the newscasts on the computer anymore, not even to check the updates. He had the alarm set to warn him if there were thunder or ion storms forecast, out of mortal terror of the damn things, but that was all. He felt that none of the rest of it had nothing to do with him. 

He got enough propaganda in school.

"Yes,” he said, to stop the conversation. "The count's not even in the yellow today. They won't close school unless there's an eighty percent chance of orange before noon." 

He deliberately pulled an artificial face of adolescent annoyance at that, trying to break the mood, and his father made a halfhearted grin. "When they give your workforce card, you’ll miss being in school," Paul said, as he'd said a thousand times before.

"Yeah,” Leander agreed automatically. Was he actually spending his last morning pacing through this tired old schtick? If he lived long enough to get a workforce card, he fully intended to hack the thing and spend his days in his own house, reading illegal books. 

It was depressing, how removed from his reality his father actually was.

He wasn’t in the mood for the debate. His usual argument was that you got paid for work, and his father's argument was that when you were in school, your parents paid for everything, and you didn't need money anyway. 

Apparently Paul had never tried to get narcotics without credits.

Besides, they were going to nail him as soon as he got to school. He was dead. It was over. No more Tri-Six. No more feeling like some kind of underground comic-book hero.

Leander got up, eager in a distant way to leave. The sooner it was over, the sooner it was over. "See ya."

Paul waved, a lazy gesture that made the boy want to scream. "Have a good day." 

Leander closed his eyes for a microsecond his father would not notice, and tried to imagine a good day. Maybe the sun would go supernova. "I will," he lied. 

Paul nodded, as though this had affirmed some belief he carried in his worn useless brain. "Learn something," he added.

Leander smiled at that. It threatened to crack his face. “I always learn something," he said over his shoulder, leaving.

"Leander," his father called.

The boy stopped, gritting back a sigh, his hand on the doorknob. "Yes?"

“You come home right after school today. Your mother and I--” Paul took off his eyeglasses, rubbed at the inner corners of his eyes. This was vaguely interesting, and Leander studied it for a moment. “There’s somewhere we have to go, tonight."

“All right,” he said. So that was when they would take him. So he had half a day to maybe...think of something?

He wouldn’t even hope for that yet. He would wait, until he saw what they had planned. There was no way to run, anyway. He’d never even get out of the quadrant, let alone off the planet and past the Reach.

"I love you, son," Paul said. 

That one was strange. And scary. 

My god, they really are going to kill me today. 

Leander paused, his hand on the door’s keypad, and looked at his father a long time before he decided it wasn’t worth the questions. He mumbled something, slamming the door behind him. The keypad beeped in protest, and he mashed at the buttons irritably until it shut the hell up.

Once he was outside, he took the little bundle of evidence out of his bookbag, and threw it into their neighbor’s incinerator. So much for that.

**lysergia**

 

There were no guards. And all the gates were closed, today, even the one in the front of the compound.

The school was obviously closed for the day, if not the entire week. So the poison levels in the air were up again. 

The mask was cloying suddenly, choking him with the ghost of the smell of rubber, faint and nauseating under the flat blank taste of filtered air. The temptation set in, familiar after years, to rip off his mask and breathe deep, sucking in the deadly air like a deprived addict. He wondered if it would be slow and painless, like freezing to death. Or would he convulse, screaming, vomiting up pale pink clots of lung tissue and tearing his hands to shreds on the cement? Without the wristunit they would never find him in time. 

The patrols would stumble across him after dark, kicking at him with tipped boots, taking him for a junkie on the nod, before they turned their flashlights on and saw his body, blue as a drowned baby, the acid in the night dew already peeling his skin. The Tri-Six, a suicide on a street corner, and all of them deprived of their scapegoat.

Leander smiled. He had control over something, and the Council didn’t even know it. It was a useless fact, though. He didn’t want to die. He just wanted to live in a world that changed sometimes. Once, it had, before the Revolution. He wished he had been born then, to see the world before the fences went up.

He considered. Going home wasn’t really even an option. He imagined hours filled with long silences between himself and his father, with his mother hurrying around, her voice transparently cheerful, asking millions of casual questions. The boy would sit and improvise the correct responses until the rage under his skin threatened to rend him into pieces, and he could make some excuse to escape to his room. He might spend hours there, too, playing silent games, burning incense to cover the forbidden smell of any number of drugs. What a boring way to spend what might be his last day of freedom.

He considered his resources. He had a stolen wrist unit that made read him as sixteen--he could buy any poisons he wanted to, from any shop in the district. He rarely used it anymore. He had tried everything, and nothing could play the trick anymore, the trick of convincing all your nerves that you were in paradise, that nothing mattered, that joy was possible in the flesh.

He missed that trick with an ache that kept him awake at night. Especially now. If he had to go out in a blaze of glory, couldn't it at least be while absolutely smashed?

There were always street drugs. It was the same shit, but not processed out of all risk, not rationed and tallied by computer to keep him from acquiring the amount he now needed to really touch this flesh. And there were still illegals--LSD, opium, peyote. 

He had about six hundred on him, and twelve hundred more on an illegal access. It was enough. He knew where to go.

Leander took the transit, making sure to change buses several times in case his stolen passcode was detected. His mistake was when he finally left the station in District Four. He accidentally used his own temp card to buy water from a street vendor, and when the man ran his number through the computer the message flag promptly flashed onto the screen.

"Message for you," he told the boy, his voice muffled behind the glass window. “Says you can pick up the new wrist unit anywhere in D-12."

Fuck. He knew Leander lived in Twelve, now, and that he had no legitimate reason to even be in Four. Except drugs. And maybe it was a trap; maybe they knew he was half-heartedly trying to think of a way to escape this. "Thanks," the boy said, grabbing the bottle, already turning.

"Hey, wait a minute--"

Leander meant to run, but the flash he got was so vivid it nearly dropped him to his knees. He could feel himself driving his fists through the little glass window. He saw the man in his hands, gaping like a fish dragged out of an aquarium, his neck breaking with the same wet popping sound chicken bones made when you twisted them.

Fuck being the Tri-Six. Fuck his impending execution. Fuck recon. He was sick and goddamned tired of being chased, bossed around, controlled.

Leander turned back so quickly the man drew away from him, startled. "Yes?" he snapped.

I could kill him. I'm already dead. And, I think, yes, I think it would feel...so...good, so……right

He snapped himself out of that thought. He’d even managed to scare himself.

The old man stared at the boy for a long moment, then lowered his eyes, suddenly, as if he had come to some decision. "Nothing," he muttered.

Leander didn’t look back to see what keys the man hit. He left his bottle on the counter, fuck it. He had his fists clenched so hard his nails bit into his palms. He didn’t even realize it until minutes later, when his hands began to cramp.

The streets were mostly deserted because of the poison levels, and Leander stopped on the corner. He felt as if he might scream if he didn’t. The sunlight was cutting through the haze, slamming from the concrete back up into his eyes, and the rhythm of his footsteps was jarring his teeth together. His breath was wheezing in and out of his mask. It tasted of rubber. He fought the urge to rip it off, tried to breathe slowly and deeply until the sickness passed. He was doubled over, gasping and shaking. If anyone had seen him they would have sent for an ambulance before he could protest.

In his private thoughts he called it the fury, and it hit him more and more often lately. Someone would do or say something that pushed an invisible switch in his head, and the visions would come.

He had never told anyone. The last thing he needed was to be hospitalized, drugged and reprogrammed. He had had quite enough of that already.

Like they're going to do, very soon...

They tried to put a positive face on it, with all the computer ads about finding help and not being alone. One prison in particular had been sending him electronic mail ever since his Jesus sketches. St. Catherine’s School and Hospital for Troubled Youth. We care about you!!! Healing minds and saving souls for the LORD!!!

Somehow he doubted that their particular brand of care was particularly tender, or loving, for that matter. He knew that the truth behind the pretty for-Jesus facade was that you would be locked up until the rebellion was beaten out of you, no matter which saint, no matter how musical the slogan.

He wouldn’t consider that as an option. That would have been admitting that the problem was his, and Leander was certain it wasn’t. Even worse, that would've been admitting that they were right--and Leander knew they weren't.

A long time ago, something had gone very wrong with this world, and it was poisoning him, slowly.

He could feel something in him, something...growing.

He wouldn’t surrender it. Even if it hurt, and it often did. It was his.

At that instant, he made a very important decision.

If he was going down, he wasn't going down alone.

**synthesis**

Leander sat there, for minutes or hours, gasping. He did not know what he would do next, and that was uncomfortable for him. He always had a plan of some kind. 

No school. And the count would keep the streets fairly empty, except for the copbots and the cameras. It would be pretty safe to do a little exploring.

Should he risk a search for a new drug--opium, maybe--or should he return home, to safety and infinite boredom?

It might be his last chance to make a decision, any kind of independent decision.

It wasn't much of a choice.

There was a risk, either way. If he went home it would be obvious he was running; therefore obvious he'd been planning something illegal. If he stayed...

The ugly shriveled man in the little street stand had backed off. There was nobody else in sight. And Leander was still hungry. He was still itching for the trick.

LSD.

An evil familiar voice whispered the letters into the base of his skull, and it made a bright hot rush explode along his spine.

All his reservations shrieked a violent NO. They were immediately drowned out by the mental equivalent of a wicked grin. His father had always called that the devil in him.

He had read all the pathetic, censored, judgmental information his computer would give him on acid, under the guise of a report for his ethics (read: hypocrisy) class. The report had mysteriously never been completed. From there, he had gone to the underground information dealers, trading nonexistent electronic credits and out-of-date passcodes, or breaking into thousands of anonymous postings with rigged sequences for actual objective data on lysergic acid. 

Revelations.

He wanted one so badly he could feel it in his bones.

It was his last day. Didn't he get one wish, at least?

“It isn’t fair,” he whispered to himself. He looked up, at the yellow haze drifting across the sun. The sun pierced a rainbow in the eyepiece of his mask, and he covered the lenses with his hands. The whole world was a jigsaw puzzle, with all the little tabs trimmed off until it was all squares. It fit, but the picture didn't make any sense anymore. 

He figured he was one of the few people with the tabs still there that had managed to escape asylum or prison. So far. Even if they hadn’t caught him, even if this was a glorified parent-teacher conference...if he kept having...attacks...in the middle of the street, he wouldn't be free for long. They probably had tapes of him already. It was only a matter of time before he snapped. He knew that. He could feel the tension inside him, rupturing soft delicate things. The question was not if, but when. 

An angry recklessness settled over him. He suddenly didn't care. About anything. The sensation was a terrible deep relief. His mind worked again. This was a new kind of fury, and he welcomed it, embraced it. They would eventually lock him up anyway. It didn't matter if it was today, two months, two years from now...he already knew he was deviant beyond all chance of redemption. 

He might as well make the most of his uncertain time outside the prison hospitals. After all, that time might only be hours.

"Bang. Smash," he whispered to himself.

Radio...live transmission.

He vaguely remembered his father telling him about some secret and probably insipid thing he had to be home in time for. No matter. He would plead sickness, or not go home at all. There was nothing for him there, anyway. Everything that mattered to him was hidden, in his backpack or in his brain. Later could just fucking take care of itself. 

Goddamned planet. It was making him crazy.

He stood up, mentally doing calculations of distance, danger, and available credits. He began to walk, the direction certain. He did not hesitate.


	2. Hero's Torch--Part 2--Sadism

sa·dism (sâ¹dîz´em, sàd¹îz´-) noun  
1\. Psychology. a. The act or an instance of deriving sexual gratification from infliction of pain on others. b. A psychological disorder in which sexual gratification is derived from infliction of pain on others.  
2\. Delight in cruelty.  
3\. Extreme cruelty.

[After Comte Donatien Alphonse Fran Sadeçois de.]

**freakshow**

 

Oberon was bored out of his mind.

He was sitting in his office on Goya. It was one of a fleet of three flagships he used on these missions of acquisitions, the newest and the largest. It was a masterpiece of leather and chrome and recessed lighting and various amusements, and he was sick of all of it.

He had already re-arranged the furniture, and sent random obscene files back to his Sphere. Now, he was sitting in his elaborate chair, staring out of the wide floor-to-ceiling window at Earth, spread out below him like a virtual map. He was in one of his brief and intense depressions, and he had rejected all offers of drugs, food, and entertainment. He wanted to sit and stare out the window, and wait for something to happen. The problem with immortality was that you might wait for a very long time.

The door chimed softly, and he looked up, irritated. He keyed the camera controls in the arm of his chair. A viewscreen on his desk slid silently up, turned itself so that he could see it. It was Victoria, with an antigrav crate. He considered, and keyed the door open.

She walked in, moving in that strange, almost aimless style she had. The crate drifted in front of her, guided by the pressure of her fingertips. “A present,” she said, smiling behind the wires lacing her lips together. It had taken her years to learn to speak again. Her voice was muffled, but understandable.

He didn’t get up, and he was careful not to look curious. “I don’t need anything, Victoria, and I told you that you could come with me only if you left me alone,” he told her, coldly.

She shrugged. “It’s something you don’t have one of.”

“Now that, I would really like to see. Open it,” he said.

She keyed something into the antigrav controls, and the top of the box unfolded like a Chinese puzzle. 

He watched this, not really interested yet. He picked up a box from his desk, opened it, and started eating mushrooms. They were imported, genetically engineered, grown underground in a computer-controlled environment. They tasted awful. He liked them because they were expensive, mildly hallucinogenic, and difficult to obtain.

Victoria lifted out a panel that he recognized. A life support card. He felt himself beginning to smile. “Will I like this?”

She looked at him, without answering, and lifted out a limp package that looked suspiciously human.

She cleared a space on his desk, without asking him. He rescued his box of mushrooms and leaned back in his chair to give her room. She laid the bundle down and unwrapped it. He was actually interested, now.

When he saw what she had brought him he stood up, stepped away from his desk, horrified. “What is it?”

“A child,” she said. 

He leaned closer, set his mushrooms down. It was a naked boy, but he was colorless, like a deep-sea fish, with white skin, white hair, strangely elongated limbs. Victoria smiled, reached out and stroked the bonecolor hair. Her fingernails were long, painted deep green. “Do you like him?”

“What is wrong with him?” Oberon asked her, revolted and fascinated.

“It’s called albinism. The engineering has cut down on it so much that he’s one of seven left in the system. Look,” she said, and turned the boy’s head, pried open one snowy eyelid. The iris of his eye was the color of a tourmaline, a deep strange shade of rose. “I know how you like eyes,” she added, her mouth turned tight and mischievous.

“Incredible.” Oberon picked up one limp hand, examined the fingers, stroked the inner wrist. The boy’s skin was soft, slightly damp, seeming almost transparent. He dropped the child’s hand back onto his chest, already reaching for the top drawer of his desk. “I wonder,” he murmured, his fingers searching for a smooth leather case.

Victoria smiled again. “What do you wonder, Lord Septarch?”

Oberon snapped open the case, and pulled out a straight-razor. “I wonder what color he is on the inside.”

**on the inside**

Leander had expected a syringe, something more violent and invasive and inherently sexual than the two tiny pieces of paper wrapped in foil he was given. He questioned this, and was told that they could be applied to any mucous membrane, usually the tongue, but they were equally effective when the more adventurous put them in the eye. Windowpaning, they called it. For the twisted, anal insertion was possible, and was the easiest method to conceal from nosy parents and curious moral police.

He pulled his mask off for an instant, holding his breath, and tucked one of the papers between his cheek and gum, and used a public restroom to push the other one up his ass, more out of obstinate perversion than any practical considerations.

The sensation was odd, not exactly painful, but itchy, like wiggling a loose tooth. He still felt the penetration of his fingers, scratchy and hot and somehow frantic, all the way to the transit station. 

Had he put it in too deep? 

Jesus, could anyone tell?

He toyed with the idea of taking it out again, but the paper was only about half the size of his fingernail, and the prospect of trying to find it and remove it was unnerving. Besides, he couldn't really put it in his mouth or his eye after that, could he?

He tried to walk normally, waiting in anticipation and dread for some sign of the drug’s effect. He felt nervous, shaky, and paranoid, all of which was more or less the way he usually felt. The paper in his mouth felt like the remnant of a spitball. He sucked it to the front of his mouth, chewed it for a moment, and tucked it back inside his cheek with the tip of his tongue. He seemed to taste a faint electric/metallic flavor, like the taste of a key if you chewed on it, but he might have been imagining that. Maybe it took more time, more patience. Or maybe he'd just been cheated.

He stood apart from the group waiting for the tran. He tried to look inconspicuous. He glanced up at the sky, and he thought he saw something, a faint metallic gleam. Probably a satellite, or a ship, with cameras pointed straight at him. 

He took a seat near the door of the transit, in case he had to escape, and waited.

He didn't wait for long.

At first, there was only trembling, locking every muscle tight and furious, as if he was expecting a fight or a beating. He tried to ignore it, even though it was so obvious the man sitting next to him eyed him suspiciously. Or did he? Leander wasn't sure.

It was nerves. Only nerves. He told himself that even though he knew it was a big fat lie.

The vicious energy settled in his mouth, closed so hard around his teeth that they grew. He could feel them forcing themselves out, long and lean. He was certain that if it continued his jaw would be sealed shut, and after much resistance he reached up furtively and felt his teeth with one hesitant experimental finger. He half-expected then to snap closed by themselves, taking most of his fingertip off. 

His teeth didn’t feel any longer or sharper, but his mouth told another story entirely. His teeth were growing, long and strong enough to bite through concrete, and starving, hunger streaming down from lips to throat to stomach.

More. He wanted more.

He looked at his hands. He could see the blood under his skin. It looked like meat. He stared until he realized he had his arm about an inch away from his eyes, and the person next to him really was watching him now, curious and revolted. He glanced at the man, and could see right through his skin, to the flesh below, red and gaping. Saliva gushed into his mouth, nearly choking him.

He had taken off his mask at some unknown point, and he wanted desperately to put it on again, but no one wore them on the transit, and he wasn’t sure he remembered how to open his backpack. 

Last day...go ahead and bite them...last day...

He sat on his hands and tried to stare at nothing in particular. He was sure his eyes held his secret, easily readable to everyone around.

He was sitting on a train full of meat. He could smell them. And his teeth, merciless, were still growing.

 

**fascination**

The doorknob was a riddle, one he struggled to solve until his father opened it for him. "Leander. You're home early," he said, already turning back to his chair.

Leander fought to decipher this, then said, "They only had school this morning. The count went up and they made us go home, but the tran was packed."

He stumbled towards the stairs, marveling at the genius of his brain. How clever of it, to construct such plausible lies, without his conscious input! He felt a rush of love for his brain, so intense he longed to unhinge it from the unfair cage of his skull, lavish it with kisses and admiration and praise.

That was so strange he stopped in the middle of the staircase, running it through his mind again. He had the urge to return to the bottom of the stairs and walk up again, as though his location was connected with his thoughts. His brain was in his hands, wet salty tissue open to his lips, his tongue, his teeth.

Teeth. He wondered if it would be soft, like the best meat, or rough and textured, like celery, cartilage. If he ate his brain, would he draw in through his blood all that he already knew? With no brain, where would the data go?

"Leander," his father was saying.

“I know, we have to go out," his miraculous brain said. God, he was hungry. “I just want to take a nap first. It's the count...I’m really tired."

"I'll call you when we need to leave," his father said.

Leander could hear his mother, just as he made it up the stairs and closed the door to his room behind him. His father was making talking sounds, which meant his mother wouldn't come up there, would let him sleep.

He collapsed on his bed. The texture of the bedclothes ripped through his nerves, and he moaned, almost undone. His fingers. Inside. He could feel them still.

LSD. He imagined the little tab of paper, up in his guts, and he thought he could feel it there, electric, dissolving.

He didn’t know if his eyes were closed or open, but he let the revelations come. New. That was all he wanted, new.

He could unravel things, now. Anything that occurred to him did so in strange new shapes, and he saw connections that he had never perceived. He watched, fascinated.

He had wanted more. This was more, so much more.

He could reach out and feel the solar system spinning around him. He was sure that if he tried he could make it spin faster, or slower, or even stop entirely.

The strange agonized angel he'd painted over his bed folded and unfolded its wings, opened a mouth studded with sharp green teeth, sprouted new eyes in myriad colors, gestured him closer with languid fingers.

Open, closed. He tried to close his eyes, and it came in waves, rattling his new teeth, and he let it come. He wished he’d put both of the little papers up his ass. That was more appropriate. Penetration. Chemical rape.

He lay on his bed, eyes hopefully closed, and waited for the revelation.

The room expanded, spinning lazily. He spread his arms wide, feeling the breeze ruffling his hair. There was a sensation of falling, and suddenly Leander was not alone.

He thought, oh, if only I could draw all this. 

The man. The dark man, sable majesty.

"Oh, it’s you,” Leander whispered, tears pricking at his eyes.

Yes. And a voice said, the torch.

Leander thought it might be God and he held out his hands, and said, "More..."

And God laughed, and cobwebs covered Leander, like rain, except they didn’t burn his skin. He was in a cocoon, and he couldn't move, and his bones were changing.

 

**kinetic energy**

 

Oberon was behind his desk, currently drifting over the Middle East. He was toying with a very expensive glass of very expensive wine.

He tossed it over his shoulder to hear it shatter.

He was angry, that slow subtle creeping anger that made him hate everything, everyone. 

The girl in his room was new, a mess of nerves and apologies, and he spun lazily in the leather chair to watch her frantically picking up glass. She had been trying without success to get the blood out of the carpet. Mostly she was just spreading the stain around, making an even bigger mess. He didn’t mind. He knew damn well the carpet would need to be replaced. He had just sent for her to watch her try and clean it. It was a game, more or less, to see what her reaction would be to see half of his elegant office splattered like an abattoir. 

She wasn't pretty. Her round pale face was a mess of overcorrected DNA. Common blood. He sighed. 

Sometimes the search was an uneasy adventure. Sometimes he would tingle in the back of his throat, the palms of his hands, being led like royalty through an endless parade of church basements and hastily emptied town halls. The air was always thick with the scent of terror, and children would be arranged for him, lined up in rows like carefully displayed jewelry in a shop window. 

Sometimes he adored it. Sometimes he would choose one, lead him or her far enough away to send the little brat's parents into paroxysms of hysteria before he would pretend to change his mind, and let the squalling little abomination go running back again.

Other times, it was a completely draining waste of time and energy, a stunningly boring galactic joyride that accomplished almost nothing. Like this time, for instance. 

God, he hated Earth. The only thing in its favor was that the level of repression inherent in a planetary theocracy produced children with interesting psychological hang-ups. That, and the entertainment of the horrified looks he got on the rare occasions when he ventured out in public. Once a woman had brandished a crucifix in his face. He'd taken it from her, held it over her head, his face expressionless, until her struggles to reach it became dull and he'd dropped it in the dust and walked past her.

His eyes drifted to the paper on his desk. He had no problem with computers, but in the interest of complicating the lives of his servants he often insisted that everything had to be hand-written, on the finest paper, in crimson ink. Without mistakes. He picked up his schedule. One more. One more selection before he could return to the Sphere, away from all this noise, dirt, religion.

He had only four. Four. Three of which were so dull he had decided they were expendable. Not one of them intrigued him. It was the first time in years he'd had to travel this far before he’d found nine or ten or so, and he'd spent two weeks finding this miserable four.

There were only seventeen to choose from in this last group, and the youngest was twelve. Twelve. He sighed. It was possible there were children being hidden from him. Or else someone was paying off his examiners to fail their children in the tests.

He would have to look into it.

The idea pleased him. Sometimes he was too good at his work, too good at commanding perfect obedience. He would have to make some changes, invent new rules. 

He missed having trials, interrogations, executions. He missed planning the perfect tortures, dressing in the perfect regalia. Watching their faces. Listening to their silly rationalizations, before the frantic incoherence began.

The girl made a small cry. He looked up to see her cradling a gashed and bleeding thumb.

His expression did not change.

He looked back at his paperwork, gestured for her to fill and bring him a new glass. She did, crying quietly. There was a scarlet thumbprint on it.

He held it out to her, wordlessly, one eyebrow raised a fraction of an inch. She wiped the smear off with the hem of her skirt, and handed the glass back to him; careful not to let her fingers touch his.

He laughed, deliberately, to see if she would cringe. She did. Priceless. “What is your name?”

“Aloris,” she said, her voice pale, thin.

“Aloris,” he said, making it obscene. “I want you to go over there and lick that carpet.”

She looked up at him, eyes stunned wide in disbelief? “What?”

“Lick. The carpet. As in put your tongue against it. Go on,” he said, amused. 

She backed up, looking at him, waiting for reprieve. He brought his new glass of wine to his mouth. He was trying not to laugh again.

She moved back to the crimson splatter, eyes dancing from him, to the blood, back to him. She knelt, finally, awkward, and pushed back her hair, leaned over, crying. He could see the muscles in her neck convulse. Gagging. Oh, beautiful. She put out her tongue, tears bright on her eyelashes. Blood and bleach.

He decided to let her live.

 

**sympathy**

 

“Leander?”

The knock came again. Leander groaned and wrapped his arms around his head, the sound still rattling around in his skull. “I’m sick,” he said. “Go away.”

His mother’s voice came again, worried and infuriating. “Leander, you have to get up. We can’t be late.”

“I can’t go. I’m sick.”

She overrode his privacy lock and opened the door a crack. The wedge of light from the hallway slammed into his cranium.

“Leander, we have to go. Even if you’re sick.”

She flicked on his overhead light, wringing another moan from him. She was leaning over him then, her hands cool and invasive. “Are you all right?” She tugged his arms away from his face, got a look at his eyes. “What did you take?”

He hated her then, ruining his dreams, and he snapped, “Acid,” to spite her, to see her face crumple.

“Soren, what is it?” came his father’s voice, irritated and tense.

His mother looked at him for a long time before she answered Paul. “Leander’s not feeling well. I’m going to help him get ready. Go downstairs and get that damn electrocar running, will you?” 

She said more softly to Leander, “I was known to frequent the opium dens when I was a little older than you. Who could blame us, the world being what it is?” 

He stared at her, caught someplace between delighted and appalled. “Does Dad know that?” he asked, his tongue stumbling. 

“Paul?” She laughed. “No. At least, he pretends he doesn’t, and I’d like if very much if it stayed that way.”

She laid her hand on his forehead, still cool, but comforting now, no longer invasive. He loved her just as suddenly as he’d hated her, and he turned his face and pressed a grateful kiss to her palm. She smelled like lavender perfume. She was like him. Yes. How he wished he had known that, before, sooner.

Soren nodded, stroked his hair. “Can you stand?”

He did, even though it sent pain through his back, his thighs. His mother was small, scarcely bigger than he was, but she kept him upright all the way to the bathroom. 

Once there, she undressed him, pushing away his protesting hands. 

“I’m too old for this,” he said.

She put her hands on her hips, glared at him, her mouth sad. “You’re right. So am I,” she told him.

She persuaded him into the tub, washed him, even his hair. He lay limp and moveless, neither helping nor hindering her. The smell of the soap was a new input, giving his brain pictures of roses and rain to wander through, curious and without fear.

She got him out of the tub again, dried and dressed him in his best civilian clothes, the blue ones, and brushed his hair. He ignored her, lost in texture, in circles of descending thought. “Thank you,” he said, almost as an afterthought.

She didn’t answer, but she smoothed his hair one more time, even though it didn’t need it.

She half-carried him down the stairs and arranged him in the electrocar. He slumped, eyes closed. Soren pushed his bag in his hands, and he took it without question.

“We could run. I’ve got enough charge to take us far away from the city,” Paul said to Soren, quietly. 

“They’ll find us. There’s no explaining that away. It’s not worth the risk, Paul. 

“He’s my boy. Our only child. We’ll never have another.”

“He’s too old, anyway. He’ll never be chosen at his age.”

“Too old for what?” Leander said, curious now. He was too young for just about everything he wanted to do. What could he possibly be too old for?

“Nothing, Leander. Don’t worry about it,” his mother told him, her voice tight and uneven.

The motion of the engine soothed him. He could feel his mother beside him, in the back seat. That was strange, for her to sit beside him and not his father. She had her arm around him. That was nice. He snuggled closer to her, buried his face in her long hair. His mind was too busy with the colors to wonder. He fell, and did not resist. 

Leander embraced the familiar weight of his bag, leaned against his mother, and dreamed.

 

**abuse of power**

 

His father drove for what seemed like hours. Leander finally heard the engines power down, and he sat up. “Where are we?”

“Ignatius Elementary Training Center,” Soren told him.

“A school for little kids? Why?”

“It’s a state-required exam, for all children under sixteen,” his father said before Soren could answer.

“They did that at our school last year,” Leander said, annoyed. “And I just took a test. Yesterday.”

“There’ve been two cases of Plague 14. They’re just being careful,” his mother said quickly.

Leander grew quiet. He had to watch the news digicasts every day in school, and he hadn’t heard about any Plague 14 cases since 2145. “I guess so,” he mumbled. 

Probably some kind of checkup because he’d been in priority counseling. Except...wasn’t something...supposed to be happening...to him?

He closed his eyes, tried to keep the busy pictures from swarming in on him. 

It was too much work.

He wanted to lie down and never move again, but at the same time, he wanted to scream as loud as he could, run as fast as he could, get into a fight. 

The change was sudden, with no scene-change, like in a movie.

Except that he had no script.

Two policemen were coming up to the car. 

They were stopping, fucking stopping, and two policemen were coming up to the car, and wasn’t he supposed to be extra paranoid, for some forgotten reason?

Leander sucked in his breath. 

One of them gestured for his father to roll down the window.

He cringed, tried to brace himself for the imagined torture of laser fire.

“We’ll take the child. You can park over to the left, and someone will show you where you can wait.”

Fascist voices. No mercy. Just following orders

Leander’s hands closed hard on his backpack. _I’m not a fucking child,_ he thought.

One of them was already opening the door on his side. “This way, son,” he said, not looking Leander in the face. He had on a helmet with a dark blue UV shield, even though it was early evening. He was wearing formal blues, with pins and braid and the elaborate cross on the right breast pocket. Leander stared at that. The threads were crawling in and out of the cloth like worms.

Underneath there was the unmistakable stiff bulge of an antilaser shield vest. 

Riot gear? For a state-required exam in an elementary school?

Leander stood up, shakily, holding tight to his bag. “My mask—“

“The count went to green about two hours ago. You’ll be all right,” the policeman said, in a fake-friendly voice, familiar from a thousand social-consciousness assemblies.

Leander slung his bag over his shoulder, stuck his hands in his pockets. He gritted his teeth and tried to will the ground to stop billowing. 

The policeman who had opened his door put his hand on Leander’s neck, steering him towards the school building, just the way they’d pushed him around in Priority. He thought about grabbing the man’s ring finger and twisting it as hard as he could—squishsnap—and then he tried to walk without thinking at all.

At the double doors two policemen patted him down. He held his breath, waiting for them to search his bag, but they put it on a little scanning table and gave it back to him without a word. His escort pushed him inside, walking so fast Leander had to nearly run. 

It was like a dream. A dream he wasn’t really having. A nightmare, he would wake up from, any minute now.

Inside there was a long hallway, lined by heavy doors. The nightmare-field tried to make his steps appear infinite, but he sang to himself: radio, live transmission, and the song moved forwards, and he knew this was no nightmare.

He wished he hadn’t been smart enough to sing.

A boy sat on a folding chair, staring off into space, his hand tight around a bandage in the crook of his elbow. 

Someone was crying, the sound snotty and muffled, a little kid trying to be quiet and failing. 

Three more policemen were drinking coffee and talking in serious tones. They fell silent as Leander was guided past them.

He was put in a room with two chairs and a portable examining table. “Strip down. The doctor will be here in just a minute,” the policeman told him.

Cold. There should have been no humanity in that voice. It should have been the mechanical, metallic voice of a security droid. Except it wasn’t. A real live human had told him to do that.

That was the scary part.

The door slammed. 

It clicked. 

He was locked in.

Leander stood there, shocked and furious. 

After a moment he set his bag in one of the chairs and fumbled out of his clothes. He set them on top of his bag in a little heap. Naked, he sat on the very edge of the examining table and tried not to look scared.

His mind found the anonymous record of an unknown movie. Name, rank, and serial number, he thought, and tried to look brave.

 

After about twenty minutes the door opened. A man with gray hair and thick glasses in a white lab coat came in, tailed by yet another policeman. He had an electronic notepad, and started firing questions even before the door closed.

“Name?”

The boy swallowed. “Leander Schaiden.”

“Parents?”

_Yes, I have two of them, thanks._ “Paul and Soren Schaiden.”

“Are you natural or engineered?”

“I’m....I’m normal. Natural.” Leander was scrubbing his hands on his bare thighs. He had decided he really, really didn’t like this guy.

“Age?”

“Fourteen.”

“Have you engaged in sexual relations with anyone of either sex?”

His jaw dropped. Literally. 

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Have you engaged in—“

“No, all right? No.” he snapped, his voice shaking. He could feel himself blushing. He wasn’t sure if it was humiliation or anger.

The doctor toggled the voice recorder on his notepad. “Male subject, circumcised. Five-four, approximately one-fifteen pounds. Perfect skin. Perfect teeth. Hair dark brown, eyes green. Very delicate bone structure. Features more or less attractive, somewhat feminine. No visible signs of disease, although he appears to be somewhat underweight.” 

He stepped over to Leander, pried open the boy’s mouth and ran his finger along his teeth. Leander gagged, and pulled away, glaring. The policeman stepped closer, warning Leander with his eyes, his hand drifting towards the stun gun at his belt.

_Oh, I get it. It takes two motherfuckers, one with a stunner, to keep control of one fourteen-year-old kid. Either you fucks know I’m the Tri-Six or you’re scared of your own goddamned shadows. Or you’re just sadistic evil bastards._

The doctor pushed on his stomach, scanned him for heart rate and breathing, peered into his eyes. He put on rubber gloves, examined Leander's penis with rough heartless fingers. "Stand up and lean over the table."

Leander was so mad he was shaking, really visibly shaking. He was wound up so tight he felt like he might just snap. "Fuck off," he snarled, making a grab for his bag and preparing to shove his way out the door, naked or not.

The policeman was a blur moving behind him. The jolt was so fast Leander didn't realize at first that the cop had stunned him. All he knew was that his tailbone hit the corner of the table, sending a stunning dull pain up into his spine. He tried to stand up, his hands curling into fists, and the room went gray and heavy.

Then he was bent over, the edge of the metal table digging into his ribs. His arms were pinned behind him, cruel hard fingers grating the bones in his wrists together, and hands were spreading his buttocks. He twisted violently, screaming profanity, his mouth bruised and muffled against the table, his teeth scraping the steel. 

_Fucker. Fucker. I'll kill you, I'll..._

And he meant that. That was the scary part, not the heartless questions, not the impending violation. His own fierce reaction. His own bloodlust.

He kicked backwards, hard, felt his heel sink into something soft, heard one of them grunt and wheeze. "Little shithead," one of them gasped out, and a fist struck his back, driving his breath out.

The jolt came again, and the world caught fire, and there was nothing.

**floodland**

 

When his vision cleared he was lying on his side on the table. The doctor and his enforcer were gone. The cramp low in his stomach told him the rectal exam had been done while he was unconscious. He wondered if they'd found the little tab of acid. It felt like they'd been trying to find his goddamned lungs.

He sat up, slowly. The pain knotted, expanded into a bright flare. He bit back a groan, and stood, clumsily. He tried the doorknob, walking with one hand pressed to his stomach.

They'd locked him in again. 

He put on his clothes. It was a useless display, an allowance to dignity he was no longer sure he possessed. His fingers were numb, and a horrible taste was running into his throat from his sinuses. He picked up his bag, buried his face in it to smell something familiar. His face left a colorless smear on the vinyl. 

He put his hands to his cheeks, and discovered he was crying.

The door opened again, and the same policeman who had brought him inside said, "You can come and wait out here."

He stepped into the hallway. His shoulderblade was a dull ache. He remembered being punched in the ribs, not his shoulder. Probably they'd done that while he was unconscious.

The policeman noticed he was crying and made a fake throat-clearing noise, and stared up at the ceiling. 

There were other kids lined up along the wall. Leander went and stood with them. The kid beside him, a boy with bright red hair whispered, "They stun you?"

"Yeah," Leander muttered, scrubbing at his face, not looking at him. Something slippery and thick and cold was greasing the flesh of his ass, spreading damp in his blue dress-civilian pants. 

Saline jelly? 

God help him, blood? 

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The wetness began to sting, making his eyes water. He folded his arms, defiantly.

"Me too. This doctor started touching my dick, and I yelled. I've got asthma and I told them that, but they stunned me anyway."

"Bastards," Leander said, more loudly than he'd meant to. One of the cops looked at him. Leander returned his stare, coldly, wishing with all his soul that looks could kill. The man abruptly looked away, glancing at his wristunit.

The red-haired kid was eyeing him. "You're too pretty. You'll probably be one of the ones to go."

Leander looked at him then. "Go where?"

The kid gaped at him as though he'd said something crazy. "You don't know?"

"How in hell would I know?” Leander demanded.

"Everybody knows about the tithe. We're candidates to be tithed out to Oberon," the kid said, the last word a whisper.

"Oberon?” This, too, was too loud, and earned him several terrified glares and some shushing from the other kids. 

He'd heard that name before. A woman who lived across the street from him, screaming at her daughter, Stop that crying, or Oberon will come and get you.

Oberon. The Septarch. Emperor of All Things Unseen.

Jesus Christ, what a stupid game. They were all headed for recon. What kind of bullshit was that, feeding them that Halloween tale?

"That's a kid's story," Leander said scornfully. "Like a fairy tale. He'd have to be about four hundred years old."

"He's immortal. He hasn't come out as far as here in sixty years. This year he came in all the way to New Jerusalem, and he only chose four. He has to have seven. Anybody who defies him, he kills. If the city doesn't give him what he wants, he levels it. That's what happened to the colony on Zion 4."

"That's bullshit," Leander told him. "That was a meteor."

The red-haired kid shrugged. "Whatever. I tell you, though, I'm glad I've got all this red hair and these ugly freckles. No way he'll pick me."

Leander put his hands to his face again. Features more or less attractive, somewhat feminine.

He adjusted the strap of his backpack over his shoulder. His stomach still hurt, the pain dull and thick like he'd been kicked. He concentrated on trying not to look somewhat feminine, and waited. He wasn't scared. Not at all. All that trembling was from the acid. Maybe this whole thing was from the acid. That was it. He was still lying in his room. It was a dream. He'd never expected one to be so vivid, so horribly...logical. Plausible. 

If it was a dream...the problem was, what the hell was dreaming this kind of this shit supposed to mean, anyway?

One of the cops was talking into a portacomm. He gestured at another cop, and he turned and yelled to the waiting children, "Everybody move out!"

Leander did. He was used to this. He stumbled along like a zombie, one hand on the strap of his bag, the other pressed hard against his stomach.

They walked in line out a back door, across a courtyard, and into a gymnasium. There were grownups there, sitting in folding chairs lined up along one wall. Leander saw his parents, and he ran to them, buried his face in his mother's shoulder before he knew what he was doing. She hugged him, saying his name over and over. "Leander. I'm here. I'm here."

He could smell her skin, that soft perfume of milk-violets-dust-cookies that only she had, and he could feel the angles of her bones. Leander felt his father's hand on his shoulder, patting awkwardly. 

_Jesus, this is real. It's real. It's too vivid, even for acid. I'm really here._

He raised his head to look into his mother's eyes. "They hurt me," he managed. It was not at all what he meant.

Her eyes were bright, liquid. She hugged him again, hard and quickly, and pressed a fast kiss to his cheek near his ear. "It's almost over. We're going home in just a minute. Here, sit down."

_She doesn't believe that._

There were no more chairs. Leander sat cross-legged on the floor at his mother's feet, his bag cradled in his lap. Soren handed him a tissue, and he blew his nose, sniffled, and tried to look okay. A few other kids his age were crying too, and not just girls. At least he wasn't the only one making a fool of himself.

"Why in just a minute?"

"They'll tell us when we can go," Soren said, not looking at him.

Leander knew, then. "It is, isn't it? It's Oberon."

Her face twisted, and he thought for a minute she might hit him. 

"Leander, hush," his father said. 

It wasn't the anger in his voice that made Leander hush.

It was the fear.

Oberon.

He lived on a mountain. In the desert. Under the ocean. In a space station built by evil aliens from Alpha Centauri. He was an alien. He was a robot. A giant. The devil. That old book, Dracula, forbidden for centuries, was about him. 

He ate children. He had a horde of demons. He was a sorcerer. He was immortal. He was evil, and he could do anything.

He was a fairy tale.

Some invisible signal passed through the room, and there was silence. Leander pressed his back tight against his mother's knees. Eyes dropped. Except for his. 

Leander raised his head, looking at the door. He sniffed at the air, as if he could catch the scent of immortality.

 

**happily ever after**

 

The guards came in first, two of them, dressed in violet laser plate armor, chrome belts crossing their chests from shoulder to waist. They had strange weapons at their belts. Crossbows, Leander realized. Not electronic, or lasers--real crossbows with actual bolts of physical steel.

_Oh, cool,_ he thought dimly.

They were flanking the Septarch.

The Septarch moved like a liquid dream, walking slowly, his head high, his eyes arrogant and bored. He owned the room and everything in it, and he knew it.

_Oh, God, I know him._ Tears pricked at Leander's eyes, and something bright and liquid and fierce ignited in his stomach and scorched, up his throat, and settled, burning, under his tongue.

The Septarch was taller than the tallest of the guards by half a foot, and he wore black, some slick tough material that looked like rubber but moved differently. Over this was a sleek floor-length coat of what Leander finally realized was leather. Nobody in his Section had the kind of money it would take to afford leather, not to mention affording the kind of police harassment that would result from dressing in a style so violently opposed to the programmed norm.

Leander wanted to draw him. Leander needed to draw him. He needed this so badly that his right hand wound itself into a cramp, and he could smell ink and paint and pencil shavings.

The Septarch was coming closer. His hair was so dark it was almost blue, falling like water down his back. He moved like a snake, as if every one of his joints were calibrated perfectly, greased and frictionless. His eyes were black, and he wore brown paint on his lips. A twisted symbol was etched in black on his forehead, a cross with a loop at the top and an arrow pointing down the bridge of his nose from the vertical bar, and a straight black line was drawn along each of his cheekbones. His face was long and angled, his skin seamless, absolutely white, as if it had been bleached.

_Oh, my god. Paint. He's wearing paint._

He was no fairy tale, and he blazed in Leander's eyes like a supernova.

New. Knew.

Oberon. 

He was a predator, and Leander felt like a bird, nailed moveless and terrified by the eyes of a snake.

The Septarch's eyes glided over the waiting children, missing nothing, but stopping nowhere. His face remained expressionless, and he did not seem to breathe. When he spoke his voice was a shock, low and rich, almost casual. "No. None of these," he said to one of his guards.

The man nodded, his jaw tight. "Yes, Lord Septarch."

Soren sagged behind him, almost collapsing under the weight of her relief.

And Oberon turned to leave.

Leander said one word.

"Wait."

It was deafening in the stillness, echoing in the vast space of the gym, repeating over and over. Wait. Wait.

Soren made a desperate, terrified sound, more breath than voice, and tried to cover Leander's mouth. She missed, and her hand spread awkwardly over her son's face, pulling his head backwards into her lap. 

Oberon froze.

He turned on his heel, pushed one of his startled guards out of his way. He stopped so close to Leander the toe of his boot brushed the boy's knee.

The Septarch looked down at the boy, straight into his eyes. Leander looked up at him, his lungs locked. Oberon's eyes were not just dark. They were without whites, without pupils, black as oil, and they reflected nothing. They reached down into his brain, into his gut, and burned him there with cold that spread tendrils into all his limbs, and left him frozen.

The Septarch said two words.

"Take him."

The guards reached for Leander. 

He didn't see them. He had fallen into Oberon's eyes, and he was still there, small and cold. A voodoo cocktail of acid and adrenaline was thundering through his chest.

Soren grabbed Leander out of their hands, tore him away from them so hard that he sprawled at her feet. "Get away!" she shrieked. 

Paul's hands were moving in slow motion, too late to stop her. It was already done.

She struck the Septarch in the chest, with both fists. He stepped back, cringed as though she had burned him. Something like terror crossed his face for a microsecond, before the careful mask of coldness closed over it. Soren raised her hands, poised to hit him again.

Oberon raised his left hand, a clipped, practiced gesture. Everything was moving frame by frame, like a series of photographs, and Leander didn't understand any of it.

The sound came, not a wail, not a loud report, not even an antimatter hiss. 

Three snicks, so close together they were almost in unison.

Soren never saw the guards move.

The bolts appeared, one in her neck, two in her chest.

Leander opened his mouth to scream, and could not.

She was transfixed, nailed to air, her back arched, head crooked, arms bent and out, her hands limp for the space of a heartbeat. 

Then, the bolts detonated, and the blood came.

She flew back. A sheet of warm fluid slammed into Leander, and he was blind, and everything was red. 

The metal chair behind her collapsed under her with a clatter, taking Paul's chair with it. He made a terrible noise, a hoarse ragged scream, and tried to put his hands on his wife. Instead, he put them in her, in the vast gaping hole that had replaced her chest. Organs pulsed there, charred, still forcing out gouts of obscene liquid.

Leander blinked. Blew out a hard breath he didn't remember taking. Tiny fragments of his mother's bone fell from his lips. He inhaled, tasted acid, copper, chemicals, ashes.

He moved his mouth to say, _Mom._ Nothing came out. 

_I was known to go in the opium dens when I was a little older than you. Who could blame us, the world being what it is?_

_Leander's not feeling well. I'm going to help him dress._

_Get away._

"Mom," he said, and nobody heard him.

Oberon spoke again. Half his face was splattered crimson, covering his black paint. "Take him."

The guards picked him up, pulled him to his feet. There was no sound. It was a vacuum.

Leander stumbled forwards twenty feet and fell to his knees. His backpack fell over his shoulder, dragged him down on all fours. He looked up through his hair, and the red-haired kid swam before his eyes, clinging close and safe to his red-haired parents. You're dead, the kid mouthed, and he raised his hand, and crossed himself, and looked away.

Leander's hand slipped in blood, and his chin struck the floor. His teeth snapped closed around his tongue, and his mouth filled with the taste of copper. 

His father was still screaming, somewhere behind him, and there was no sound, only texture, and it was all tangled together with the pain in his tongue, his knees, his stomach.

Green lines. A basketball court. 

He spit, and the green lines were gone. Red. Green. Christmas. 

His mother laughing, hanging strings of popcorn on their tiny illegal Christmas tree, His father, behind her, laughing too, wrapping his arms around her waist to drag her to the floor, tickling her until she shrieked.

New. Knew.

The guards picked him up again, hands under his arms, at his elbows, an arm around his waist. They were gentle. He looked for the Septarch. Oberon was standing still, looking vaguely towards the ceiling, looking either bored or disgusted.

He turned his face into a violet suit of armor, eyes open wide, and his eyelashes brushing steel. Gagging. Air. There was no air.

He fell again. This time, he never made it to the floor.


	3. Hero's Torch-Part 3-Captive

cap·tive (kàp¹tîv) noun  
1\. One, such as a prisoner of war, that is forcibly confined, subjugated, or enslaved.  
2\. One held in the grip of a strong emotion or passion.

adjective  
1\. Taken and held prisoner, as in war.  
2\. Held in bondage; enslaved.  
3\. Kept under restraint or control; confined: captive birds.  
4\. Restrained by circumstances that prevent free choice: a captive audience; a captive market.  
5\. Enraptured, as by beauty; captivated.

 

**fairy tales**

He was in his bed. Someone was poking him, and the neighbor kid's mom was yelling across the street, _Stop that crying. Oberon will get you._

He opened his eyes. They were gummy, and he rubbed at them. There was an instant of panic; he was sitting up, and he couldn't stand. His hands found the buckles. A harness. He was in a transport. He exhaled, slowly, aching. His bag was tucked under his feet. He kicked it gently with his heel, making sure it was really there.

The crying was still there. He blinked, his eyes adjusting, and saw that there were nine other seats, four of them occupied by the dim forms of sleeping children. The poking came again and he looked down. A little girl, was sitting in the cramped aisle, tugging at his pants and crying. "Mister, are you awake?"

He scrubbed at his eyes one more time. "I'm awake."

"Open the door. I wanna go home."

He sighed. "I can't open the door. The accelerat--um, the transport is going really really fast." And it's locked, he added silently.

"I don't wanna go to jail," she said, smearing snot across her face with the palm of her hand. 

Leander grimaced, leaned over, the buckles trying to dig holes into his ribs, and dragged her up into his lap. She was wet enough to squish against his thighs, and heavy as hell. 

He scrubbed her face off as best he could with the tail of his shirt, feeling dampness spreading into his crotch. "What's your name?" he asked to distract her, groping over his head. There it was. He flicked the switch and a tiny dim light came on.

"Jyana," she said around her fingers, staring at him curiously. She was adorable, with huge blue eyes and hair that was almost white. "Why're you all bloody?"

"I fell down." he said shortly.

She nodded, slowly, and her eyes relaxed. She understood that. Then the panic again. "Can't you open the door? I don't wanna go to jail," she begged, the tears starting again.

"We're not going to jail," he said, wishing she would just go to sleep. His head was killing him, and he didn't want to think, at all, about anything.

Jyana chewed her lip. "Where're we going?"

_To hell, in a handbasket, and guess what? The most beautiful motherfucker you've ever seen is there waiting for us. He has eyes like ink and he's going to suck out our brains._

He had the sudden urge to burst out laughing. Or crying.

Or screaming. 

She was poking him again. "Where?"

"To heaven. We're so special that we get to go to heaven early," he lied. 

"I want my mommy," she said, leaning her head on his chest.

"Me too," he muttered, closing his eyes.

"Will she be there in heaven?"

"Yeah. She'll be there," he said, and swallowed hard.

"You're nice," she mumbled, sleepy.

_I'm not that nice,_ he thought.

His hair was drying in spikes. That was where his mother was. In his hair, on his skin, in fragments down in his lungs.

"Knew," he whispered, but Jyana was already asleep. 

He listened to her breathing for a long time.

 

**impact**

Something woke him. Leander lay still, his eyes still closed, and tried to figure out what it was.

The transport. The vibration of the engine had stopped. And Jyana was no longer in his lap. Her damp warm weight was gone, and the front of his body was freezing cold.

He opened his eyes a crack, without moving. The world was busy and jagged, and it noticed his arrival and swarmed in on him. One of the guards was there, watching him. He was a young man, slim, only a little taller than Leander, with light hair and friendly brown eyes. 

_You're one of them. One of the ones who pulled the trigger. And you're also the one who carried me._

He wrapped his arms around his chest. There was a hole there, and he had to keep his insides in and the outside out. 

Hole. Someone had shot him, with exploding bolts. And they'd carried his mother away. He'd been there dying, and watched this man carry her out of a school that had never existed.

"I know you're awake," the guard said, and his voice was not unkind. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm here to take you to another doctor. He's just going to ask you some questions."

Questions. Those were those tricky fucking things. They made people say other things. "Do I have a choice?"

The guard hesitated. "They'll have to examine you again. I know they hurt you before, but it won't be the same doctor."

Leander hated them all. Doctors. Humans. "Why do I have to be examined again?” His brain was doing it again, talking all by itself, bypassing his mouth and sending words out straight through the holes. He hoped it was making sense. He didn't want to go into recon.

The guard sighed, and Leander realized he didn't like this either. "That's how it's done. I'm sorry."

Word. There was a word that meant a person, only one specific person. Name? "What's your name?"

The man looked surprised, as if no one had bothered to ask him that before. "Theren," he said.

Now. A word. It was magic, you said that word and it only meant...that...one...person. But the word didn't mean anything yet. "Who are you, though?"

It was spinning, and it wasn't the room at all. It was his brain. His marvelous brain. He realized he was watching his thought processes, unfolding in careful equations. And he said, "You're not a guard at all. I know you. Behold, a pale horse, and the name of the rider was death, and hell followed with him." 

There were beasts, then, all around him, in the space between reality and his mind, and he held up his hands, but they couldn't touch him. 

He was awake, then.

Theren sighed again. "I'm your guard." he said, and it sounded as if he were very far away, speaking through deep water.

Leander raised his hand, and pointed at him, and said, "Murderer. I know you. I see right through that face you wear."

Transport. A big heavy electric thing that took you from point A to..."Where are we going?"

"It's a planet past the Reach. It's called Omega-7-18."

Planet. You couldn't even leave the surface in an electrocar. That was why it was called a surface transport. He had no idea what was going on, now, and his brain gave him his next line, and he said, "Can you breathe the air?"

"It's cold, but, yeah, you can breathe."

Leander's head was heavy, and colors trailed across his vision. He thought, I understand everything, and his brain said, "Is it pretty?"   
"Pretty?"  
"The planet."

"No," Theren said. "It isn't."

_Safe. Guard. Wait._

"Theren. Are you guarding me from, or guarding me for?"

The man didn't look into his eyes. "Yes."

 

**cryptogram**

He was led out of the transport, into a tiny elevator, and into another room, like somebody's office. Theren brought him food--chicken soup in a shatterproof bowl, milk, cookies that were made with real sugar. Sugar was currently more expensive than cocaine, and 

_cookies smell like cookies like violets like home like milk like_

_blood_

Theren went and waited in the corridor, leaving Leander alone. He ate mechanically, set his empty bowl on the edge of the desk.

The doctor came in after only a few minutes. It wasn't the same one who had hurt him. This man was older, maybe sixty, his skin worn and lined and tough, as though he'd lived off-world. His hair was steel-gray, cut short and careless. His eyes were blue, and looked too young for his face. He was carrying an electric notepad. He gave Leander a crooked smile, and flopped beside him in one of the too-soft chairs, instead of behind the desk.

"Cookie," Leander told him. He knew this doctor wouldn't understand the depth of meaning in the word, didn't understand sugar and texture and the art of swallowing without choking. He wondered if the cookie was falling in little chewed-up glops through the holes. He put his hand on his chest to see, but he didn't feel anything.

Cayle nodded. "Do you want another one?" 

Leander shook his head. He didn't want anything. 

"Ok, your name is…." He checked his notepad. "Leander. I'm Cayle. I just want to ask you some questions--"

Questions. He already had all the answers to the doctor fucking questions questions QUESTIONS. 

"I'm fourteen. My State Id is 467-8471 D-12. No, I'm not genetically engineered, and no, I've never had sex, not with girls or boys, or anyone else," he said around a mouthful of cookie. "Anything else?"

Cayle laughed. It wasn't a mean laugh--it was crooked and honest. It was like broken glass hitting Leander. He cringed. 

That looked like trauma to Cayle, but there wasn't much he could do about it. "I'm not about to ask those kinds of questions. You've probably already had quite enough of that."

Well, this guy was going to pretend to be friendly. How nice. Leander glared. He felt his body decide to have an emotion, and it clicked into place like a program, and he thought it was called either anger or hate. "So you're a shrink. I had all those questions in counseling. You've probably already got the records."

"I'm not a shrink." Cayle patted the pockets of his white lab coat, and came up with a cigarette case. He glanced up at the enviro sensors, and stood up and made a quick trip to the door to deactivate the smoke detectors. He settled down again, and lit up. "And I don't give a damn what Earth's state doctors think about you. I was trained offworld a very long time ago, and I really don't care what the R of E thinks about anything. I like to draw my own conclusions."

Leander thought about that. Not bad. The guy could be pretending, true. He was already a prisoner anyway. Not much to lose. Besides, he should be bleeding to death pretty soon anyway. "So ask."

Cayle logged into his notepad. It had dual screens, and he flipped one of them up so that Leander could see it. He typed something, and an inkblot flickered onto the screen. "All right, Leander. I want you to tell me what each one of these looks like to you. There are no wrong answers, just say whatever pops into your head. Okay?" 

He was in recon already. That was it. He was in recon and they had drugged him up so bad his brain was making up this bizarre shit to pass the time. He was really in that same small room he remembered from before, with six or seven of them screaming at him about Jesus until some crushing guilt and panic wrapped him in yellow tentacles, and he wanted to disappear...

Cayle's side of the screen displayed readings of Leander's heart rate, breaths per minute, and temperature. Leander eyed that, but didn't ask. This doctor probably thought he was too stupid to understand the charts anyway. 

_They're always spying on you,_ he thought, with the kind of resigned angry resentment that the State government seemed designed to inspire. 

This was new, and he didn't like this game. The gears in his head were grinding furiously, and he wondered if he should lie, but the doctor would know that and what good would the truth be doing him anyway? And what was he saying, in that tiny interrogation exorcism chamber, out in the real world?

"Okay," he said, cautiously.

He studied the first one. "Birds.” 

Cayle nodded, and clicked it to the next picture. "Thunderstorm clouds....a butterfly....one of those gargoyle things they used to have on churches."

It was hard. He was having a hard time telling the difference between the pictures in his head, the ones in the air, and the ones on the screen.

"A dead squished cat like an electrocar hit it...a bruise...a 4798p0-0 alpha circuit..."

The game went on, and Leander tired of it quickly. On about the fifteenth picture or so, he snapped, "It's an ink blot. Did I pass?” That was so cool, he almost applauded himself, and he decided he'd won at least a point or two.

Cayle folded the screen he was looking at back down. "You can't fail, Leander. Just one more game, and we're done, all right?"

He sighed. _You fucker._ "Fine."

"I'll say a word, and you say the first word it makes you think of. Okay?"

He nodded, frowning. Something in the back of his mind was droning about left brain right brain verbal spatial visual unconscious mind. He was sure it wasn't even speaking English.

"Love."

_bolt butterfly blood bone._ "Danger," he said.

"Danger."

_eyes ink falling falling paint lips eyes._ "New."

"New," Cayle said back to him. 

A look crossed his face so quickly the doctor couldn't have said what emotion it was. His heart rate went up, and his temperature went up half a degree. 

_hands eyes hands fingers falling..._ "Wonderful."

"Wonderful."

Leander shifted in his chair. Another half a degree. _Cold blood taste metal falling._ "Fear."

"Fear."

He closed his eyes. 

_(pain guilt despair falling blood butterflies eyes like ink like ink, like)_

"Love," he mumbled.

"Love," Cayle said, again. 

Leander didn't answer. 

_pain more and there is no... god torch a dark man in my room in my head eyes eyes_

The readout informed Cayle he'd just had an adrenaline rush.

Then Leander whispered, "Wait."

Cayle didn't understand. He waited.

Leander opened his eyes to glare at him, and said, "Can I go now?"

Cayle looked at him for a long time. Then he said, "All right. They've got more tests to do, but you'll be sleeping, and you won't feel a thing. You'll even sleep right through the space transport."

Space. Transport. A new planet and no, it isn't pretty. "Where's Theren?"

"He's waiting for you. He'll be with you for the trip, don't worry." 

Leander was getting sick of that. "I'm not worried about him, or the goddamned trip. I don't trust him."

"Why not?"

_Why not? Because he works for the...man who...the person who..._

"I just don't is all," the boy said, too quickly.

The doctor was filling a syringe with pale green fluid. Leander held out his arm, staring at the floor, feeling like a goddamn science project. He didn't ask what it was, and he didn't resist. He didn't care. 

Cayle led him out into the corridor. A half-grav stretcher was there waiting. "Don't be nervous. We're going to take good care of you."

_Shut up,_ Leander thought. 

"How nice," he said, as sarcastically as he could. And he wondered if his mother would even get a funeral.

Cayle tried to help him onto the stretcher. The boy pushed his hands away and climbed on himself. 

The sheets were like snow against his skin, starched and impersonal. 

_Love is death,_ he thought, and he didn't know where he'd heard that before, but the voice was uncanny and familiar, and it spiraled around him like an ion storm.

"Are you cold, son?" the doctor asked, and he was either concerned or an extremely good actor, and he pulled one of those pink woven blankets the hospitals used up over Leander. 

It didn't help. It only wrapped the cold around him, and he felt teeth in him, in a place he hadn't known he had. "No," he said, and an unreasonable benevolence swept over him, and he said, "I'm sorry I snapped at you."

"It's all right. Just try to relax. Do you need anything?"

"Could I...have some water, maybe?"

Cayle frowned, and produced a military-issue canteen. "I'm afraid I've drunk out of this already, but..."

"I don't care if you don't," Leander said, and the man unscrewed the cap and held it to his lips, and Leander tasted rain, and nearly choked, but the water rushed down his throat, cool and clean, and he lay back, and sighed. "What are they going to do?" he asked, out of curiosity more than concern.

"I think...you might have been, ah, hurt during your exam."

A furious jagged cramp made Leander's knees come up, as though the man had just reminded him he was in pain. "Will it hurt, whatever they do?"

"No. Not at all. You'll be asleep, and it'll stop your hurting."

_No surgery could do that,_ Leander thought. "Okay," he whispered, and he watched the ceiling rushing by, and then he was in a tunnel, and then there was only dark, and the sound of wind running past him, hurrying away to unknown things.

 

**in loco parentis**

 

Oberon sat at his desk, the papers in his hands. Ivory parchment. He skimmed the paper, searching the red ink for traces of erasure, a crooked letter, a space too short or long. It was perfect, and his eyes returned to the top of the page, reading more quickly than the most advanced graphic scanner. Behind him, on one of the wallscreens, an old film of an evisceration was playing. He'd left it on and forgotten it deliberately, for the benefit of anyone he dealt with here. General, pervasive fear tended to increase efficiency in most of his extensive staff.

"He was torn. Anally. Was he raped?"

The guard trapped in front of him swallowed hard. "No, my Lord. It was a minor tear, a scratch really, from his...resistance once the exam was already...in progress. It did require closure acceleration, and they gave him antibiotics to be safe...but it was in fact a minor injury, no threat to the boy's health. He struggled...they stunned him, and he was still struggling...it was necessary to restrain him forcibly..."

"He was stunned?"

The words fell into the silence like shrapnel. 

The guard coughed, pale. "As I said, my Lord, he resisted...it was necessary..."

Oberon interrupted him, smoothly and quickly. "The doctor. Kill him. Impalement. The policeman, too. The serum, first, to rule out unconsciousness, that last Lot number we used, four-twelve? Stakes thirty feet long, twelve inches in circumference. The dull ones." He paused, and added, "Make whatever cuts are necessary for successful penetration."

“My Lord?” The guard's voice betrayed him. "My Lord, the doctor has been an examiner for fourteen years--"

Oberon raised his eyebrow. The man fell silent.

"Do you realize that this boy is the first human being to speak to me of his own free will in almost two hundred years?"

This was almost shouting. 

Shouting meant blood.

The guard cleared his throat, his eyes searching for escape. There was only the wallscreen, and the Septarch in front of it, and the question hanging in the air. "No, my Lord, I did not realize that, but--"

"Haven't I been clear enough? Do I need to tell Equipment to prepare three stakes, or two?"

The guard closed his eyes. 

Equipment didn't prepare the stakes at all. 

They prepared oak dowel rods and the proper tools for rounding them for shipment, and the prisoners finished their stakes themselves. 

Sometimes lovers were forced to shape them for each other.

He felt it, wood as thick as a man's arm driving into his intestines. 

Sometimes they greased them with mineral oil. 

Or gasoline.

Or nothing at all.

What was human decency, against that? 

"I'll see to it," he said.

"Do that. Let me know when this is ready. I'll want to see them beforehand. And I want all of this recorded."

These were unnecessary orders, delivered out of spite. Everything was recorded, reviewed, filed, everything that touched his life at all, even in the smallest way. But it was fun, satisfying, to restate his demands at random intervals.

Oberon waited for nearly a full minute, watching the man suffer, then inclined his head a fraction of an inch towards the door. 

The guard fled. He almost made it down the hall before the retching drove him to his knees.

Oberon listened for the space of a dozen heartbeats, satisfied. Torture without touch. He allowed himself to smile. There was no one there to see him. There was a camera droid in his office, true, but he had the only access code to its files, and there was no backup system.

He returned his attention to the file.

Leander Schaiden.

The Septarch ran one gloved finger over the name. He traced slow, careful circles around it, stared at it until he could close his eyes and see it etched in neon on his eyelids.

He tapped a button on his desk panel. "Have them prepare the Worm Chamber for my arrival. One hour," he said.

He waited until the signal light for received blinked on, and shut off the link.

Someone tapped at the door. He sighed, annoyed. "Come in."

A female attendant he hadn't seen before crept in, shaking, and said, "Theren sent this ahead for you. It was in the boy's things."

She laid it on his desk, and backed away. It was a small notebook, with EXTREMELY SECRET BOOK OF SACRED HOLINESS written on the front cover.

He glanced at it, pretending to be completely disinterested, and waved her away.

He waited until she had been gone at least five minutes, and picked up the notebook.

Something strange made him hesitate to open it.

He set it on the corner of his desk, and left it there.

 

**the wasteland**

 

Leander dreamed of being in a tiny room that spun around and around until the centrifugal force threatened to crush his lungs. There were lights, and there was a sense of fierce energy around him, under him. 

After that he was being pushed around on a stretcher, and his mother was there, moving her lips in the shape of his name with the bolt in her neck bobbing up and down. She was as clear and vivid as a holograph, with his dark hair, green eyes, but her lips were white, and she did not blink.

He reached his hands out to her, and saw that they had become barbed hooks. Love is death, said a dark casual voice near his ear.

The bolt detonated. This time there was no blood. Instead she exploded in a blizzard of brightly colored confetti, and when he reached out his new hands to catch some, he saw that it was in the shape of tiny butterflies. Each one was marked with the strange looped cross Oberon had worn on his forehead. In the dream he thought they were tabs of acid, and he didn't want to taste them, but thousands of them were flying towards him, and his jaw was locked open. He couldn't close his mouth.

He woke up in a hospital bed, drenched with sweat, shivering.

For a long time he didn't move. Moving meant thinking, and as long as he stayed still, nothing hurt. He rubbed his fingers together--that didn't count as moving--but the confetti was gone.

Finally he stretched his arms, opened his eyes. 

He was clean. 

His throat tightened. 

Even her blood was gone. 

He should've licked some, he thought, with nausea and self-loathing. He should have licked some so they could never, ever take it away.....

He was dressed in a white shirt and pants woven of a substance so thin and soft he tugged at it to see if it would tear. It didn't.

He sat up, and Theren was leaning against the wall, watching him. "It's silk," he said.

The boy raised his hands to his throat. Something twinged in his right arm, and he looked down at a small round pink scar just below his wrist. "You took out the socket for my wristunit," he accused.

"Yes. The Septarch doesn't allow them. You've got the standard Sphere issue, now. Subdermal."

Leander shrugged. He’d hated that damned thing anyway. He wasn't sure he liked the idea of an implant, though. Then he thought of his new unit, waiting somewhere in Twelve for him to pick it up. It was eerie, and he shuddered. It would probably sit neatly labeled on a shelf somewhere for the next century. "So he'll know where I am, what I'm doing, all the time."

Theren's expression was strange. "He'll know."

A microchip? He squinted at the thick round scar. Did he care? Jesus, did it even matter if he cared?

Leander squirmed, slid gingerly off the edge of the bed. He wasn't dizzy, and he didn't hurt, not his knees, or his stomach, or even his tongue. No pain. Not outside, anyway. "Where's Jyana?"

"Jyana?" Theren looked puzzled. 

“She had white blonde hair. Just little, like four or so. She was crying for her mother. I had her in my lap."

Theren didn't understand. "In your lap?"

Leander looked at him like he was a complete idiot. "She was crying," he said again. "She thought she was going to jail."

“The girl? All the other children are already in the station. They went on ahead about two hours ago. You were...some medical attention was necessary. I'm going to drive you to the Sphere in the anti."

Anti. Antigrav, a transport that never touched the ground, that didn't need underground magnetic tracks, that cost about half a million credits and could go up to four hundred miles an hour. Leander had spent hundreds of classes drawing them in the margins of his notebooks.

“A hovercraft?” He tried not to sound exited and failed. "I've never been in one of those."

Theren frowned. "They're less fun than you think. You'll see why they're used here soon enough. There's no other way to get around. Oh, here," he added, and reached down near his feet, and handed Leander his bag.

The weight was different. He opened it and rummaged around inside. "My journal. It's gone."

"I know. I'm sorry."

Leander looked at him, and saw that the man actually was sorry. He shrugged. "I was done with it anyway."

 

**sodom**

 

Omega-7-18 was a wasteland. 

Leander thought it was water they were skimming over until he looked closer. It was gray volcanic rock, sculpted in permanent rifts and cracks. The sky was deep orange, streaked with clouds the color of sewage, and a dim and distant sun was sinking into the horizon.

It definitely wasn't Heaven.

"Is it all like this?"

"All the habitable parts, yes." 

Leander kept looking, waiting for grass, ocean, trees. Anything. There were only black rock formations, vaguely skeletal, and occasional bubbling pools of molten rock. The entire landscape looked as though it were wounded, rotting.

He sat back, disappointed and vaguely nauseous, and clutched his bag close to his chest. "You're right," he said to Theren, sitting close beside him. "It isn't pretty."

Theren reached over and set the controls for window of the cockpit to opaque without a word.

They hummed along in silence for a while. Then, Leander said carefully, "Do you work for Oberon?"

The craft jerked slightly. "You really should call him the Septarch. Yes, I work for him."

"Will I work for him?"

Theren pressed his lips together. "Sort of."

A million more questions presented themselves. _Why are his eyes so black? Will he eat me? Is he a demon? Why did he fucking KILL MY MOTHER?_

The boy drew in a long, shuddering breath. "Is it far?"

Theren toggled the window transparent again in answer.

"There it is," he said.

It was a black hemisphere so vast it could have been a part of a fallen moon. Four crooked, twisted towers marked the corners of an invisible square around it. The land surrounding it was absolutely flat, and seemed even more scorched than the rest of the planet. Something at the top of the hemisphere jutted out into the air, spinning like a complex gyroscope. Leander stared at it until he realized it was some kind of relay system for a satellite. 

"It's huge," Leander whispered, his knuckles white on the straps of his backpack.

"Yeah. And that's not even a fifth of it. Most of the Sphere is underground."

They drew nearer. Soon the dome was so tall Leander couldn't see the top of it anymore no matter how he craned his neck. "Does it have a shield?"

“It doesn’t need one. It would take a supernova to burn through that. You can’t scratch it, even with keradian drill bits. You can hit it with a pulse cannon from a foot away, and then put your hand right on it. It won't even be warm."

Weird, for a surface structure. Expensive, too. Leander studied the satellite relay again, turned his head to look back at the nearest of the four towers jutting up from the ground. It looked, to his undernet--trained eyes, like a nacelle housing a mercury gyre drive. "Can it fly?"

Theren stared at him, then gave a nervous laugh and shook his head. "You ask too many questions, kid."

Theren typed something into a remote unit. A wedge opened along an invisible seam in the side of the Sphere, just wide enough for the craft to slip inside. It closed instantly, and the blade of dull light vanished. There was no deafening sound, no huge thud, and just a humming whine of vast mechanics moving the plates of the dome.

It was absolutely dark. The lights of the control panel hovered in space, a tiny navigational screen tracing a line for Theren to follow.

"I'm never going back to Earth again, am I?"

Leander was a little surprised, at how nonevent this realization felt. If he felt anything  
about it _relief_ was the best he could do.

Theren didn’t answer. He adjusted readings that didn't need adjusting, and pretended he hadn't heard the question. 

The hovercraft pulled into a docking bay. It jolted as the clamps closed on it, and the recharge cycle began. The dome slid open, and Theren climbed out and lifted Leander out, ignoring the face he made at that. “I’m supposed to restrain you," he told the boy, "but I don't like that, and I won't do it if you give me your solemn promise that you won't do anything stupid."

"Like run?"

"Exactly. It's both our necks if you try that."

Leander paled at that, but he nodded with his mouth in a solid straight line. "I promise. No running."

And he meant it.

That was the scary part.

There was no point in running, now, anyway. Where would he run to? And...evil curiosity...what, exactly, was he running from?

Theren led him out of the docking area, into an elevator. It descended so rapidly the boy put out his hand, grasped the railing. "Where are we going?"

“For now, the Gallery. It's where kids your age are ke--where they stay."

Are kept. Leander ran his hand through his hair, trying very hard not to look somewhat feminine.

From the elevator they went through a dark stone hallway. There were torches--actual torches, with real fire--set at regular intervals. Leander stared at them. He'd never seen fire, really, except at executions. Or at his own event-art terrorist Tri-Six exhibitions, and that had always been from a distance. He tried to stop to examine one more closely, but Theren's hand on his shoulder pushed him forward.

"Is it all like this?"

"No. Just this wing. Most of it is…worse."

"Who designed it?"

"The basic structure is...it's alien, but the Septarch made a lot of changes when he took the title."

"Took the title? Is it like, an office?"

"No. There was only one other before him, and he's dead. Three hundred years or so."

"Did Oberon kill him?"

"Kid, everything is recorded here, all right? You shouldn't use his name like that. Only his doctor gets to do that. Yes, he killed him, and if you want to know how, just wait. Every year on the anniversary of his death The Septarch plays the film of it." 

"Why doesn't his doctor have to call him that?"

Theren sighed. "Kid, my point. You're missing it. And his doctor is a regen...a clone of the first doctor, with the memories reconstructed. Legend has it that he was here since the Septarch took the throne, and that he was the only one who helped him when he...when Acharis was the Septarch, and Oberon was his prisoner."

"So they're friends, him and this doctor?"

"Friends? No. The Septarch has no friends."

Leander thought about that. That made him sad, and he wasn’t sure why. No wonder he was so...no wonder he was like that. It would suck completely to be immortal and not have anyone to talk about it with. "Aren't you his friend?"

"Leander, I've had it with the twenty questions, all right?" Theren snapped, in a tone of voice that told Leander the answer was no.

They went through three sets of huge steel doors, with keypads to unlock them. Then they turned left, and there was an archway with a final locked door.

The room they went into was long and narrow, and separated into cells by iron bars that ran from the floor to the high vaulted ceiling. There were only two torches here, beside the door, and the rest of the room was in deep shadow. Leander stopped, backed into Theren. "This is the Gallery?"

"Yes."

"But it's...like a prison."

“I know,” Theren said quietly. "It's not as bad as it looks. It's clean, and there aren't rats or anything."

Rats. Leander hadn't thought of that. Long yellow teeth. Long wormy pink tails, and little scrabbling feet.

He swallowed hard. "Are there going to be any other kids?"

"Just you and Camille."

"Camille?"

"She's right down here. She'll be in the cell just beside you." He paused. "Camille is...well, she's--"

Theren was cut off by a bloodcurdling shriek that nearly made Leander forget all about his promise not to run. There was a terrible clattering. Someone near the end of the row of cells was rattling the bars.

Theren stepped past Leander, walking quickly. "Camille, knock it off,” he snapped. "I've got a new one, and you're scaring the shit out of him. It's not funny."

There was silence, then a girl's voice, bitter and hoarse. "Yeah? Well, bring him down here. I want to see my replacement."

Leander looked at Theren and shook his head. His throat hurt, and his eyes were bright with tears. "Do I have to stay here?" he pleaded.

Theren did something absolutely forbidden. He took Leander's hand and squeezed it quickly. "Leander, she's crazy," he whispered. "She's been here since she was eleven. She's seventeen now. She always does this to the new ones, but she's harmless. I promise you."

"Leander?" came Camille’s voice, calmer now. "Is that your name?"

Leander looked at Theren. The guard nodded. "Yeah," Leander called out. "I guess I'm going to live here with you."

Silence. Then, "I like that name. I won't scream anymore. Are you...are you mean?"

Leander didn't know quite what to say to that. "No. Not unless someone's mean to me first."

"Okay," she said, after a moment. "That's fair enough."

Theren took one of the torches from the wall, walked towards her cell, and Leander followed. 

Camille was tall and so thin she looked ill, with redbrown hair and blue eyes. She was dressed in the same white silk as Leander, and she had one hand on the bars. She smiled at him, and he could tell by the light in her eyes that she was crazy, but she didn't look mean either. 

Her cell had a small bed, a chair, and a little table. There was a curtain in the back corner, probably for whatever passed as a bathroom in this place. The cell beside hers was the last one, and it was furnished identically. It had a keypad set in the door, and Theren put in the code, shielding it with his cupped hand so Leander couldn’t see. The door slid open. Theren stepped aside, not looking at the boy, and said, "This one's yours."

Leander stepped past him. He stood in the middle of his cell for a moment, and turned back to Theren. The guard wouldn't look at him. He sat on the edge of his bed, his bag cradled in his lap. Theren closed the door, and Leander bit his lip when the locks clicked into place.

Theren gestured at the keypad. "This red one, here, is if you need anything--if you’re sick, or hungry, or if...if you need anything. I usually come in every couple of hours or so, but if you push that, I'll be here in less than a minute."

He turned to leave. Camille caught at his arm as he walked past. "Tell Oberon I hate him! Tell him I hope a tiger eats him!" she said fiercely, her voice shaking. "And ask him why he doesn't love me anymore!"

He removed her fingers, gently. "I'll tell him, Camille," he said. 

"Promise me! Cross your heart, Theren!"

"I promise," he said, softly and patiently. "Cross my heart. Hope to die."

"Stick a switchblade in your eye," Camille added, and laughed like an animal.

_Oh my God,_ Leander thought, shaking. _What have I done?_

He thought he was going to be sick, and he breathed in short, quick pants through his nose, and reached up and pressed his hand hard against the back of his neck, until the feeling passed. 

Theren returned the torch to its place, and closed and locked the door behind him.

Leander was breathing very, very slowly. _I'm not going to. I'm not going to. I'm not--_

He burst into tears, and buried his face in his backpack. It smelled of his room, of home, and that made it worse, and he cried so hard he was almost sick. He could feel Camille watching him, and he didn't give a damn. Fuck her.

He cried for a long time. 

"Hey," she said, softly.

He pushed his face harder against his bag, feeling the tape against his face, the smooth plastic stickers and little sharp pieces of wire, and the familiar lumps inside.

"Hey, Leander, come here."

He scrubbed his face and looked up. 

She was sitting on the floor next to the bars that separated their cells, and stretched her arms through them, reaching towards him. "It's okay. Come here."

He did, still holding his bag. Something of him didn't want to move, didn't want to owe her anything. Still, he was hungry, in a terrible deep way, and contact was better than nothing, even with her, this lunatic, and his fellow prisoner.

He sat down on the floor, stiff and awkward, and she pushed and pulled at him until his back was against the bars, and reached her arms around him and hugged him, and pressed a dry, soft kiss to the back of his head. "Go ahead and cry. It's better to do it now. You might forget how, later."

He was crying still. "What am I doing here? I want to go home," he choked out, sobbing.

"This is home," she said. "I'll be your mom for a little while."

She was crazy, and she wasn't his mother, and he could feel the bars digging into his shoulder blades, but she was human, and female, and warm and alive, and her voice was gentle. 

She rubbed his shoulders, singing something tuneless, and she let him cry himself out. 

After a while, her hands on his shoulders made the back of his neck feel funny, and he tried to think of a polite way to ask her to stop, even thought he didn't really want her to. Her fingers were soft, the tips of them like flower petals, and for a while he let her touch him. There were many things in him, still sharp enough to sting, that demanded he accept this small comfort.

"I'm tired," he said finally. 

She patted him, and stood up. "The beds are okay. You should try to sleep.” She stepped back over to her bed, drew back the covers to show him clean sheets, a thick mattress. "See?"

He stumbled over to his own bed. He climbed in with his bag, pulled the blankets up so she couldn't see him and pulled off the white shirt, and threw it. 

His bag. It smelled like sweat and marijuana and silent masturbation and his mother's favorite laundry soap. It smelled like home. He held it close, its jagged decorations digging into his chest.

He squeezed his eyes tight so he couldn't see the flickering of the torches, and he hugged his bag to his chest, and pretended he was home.

"It'll be all right, Leander. He's a monster, but at least he's beautiful."

He didn’t answer. He had no idea what to say to that anyway, but he agreed with both adjectives completely.

She sang for a while, and her voice was pretty, even if the words were mad and ancient.. 

_...there was a man who lived in Leeds...who filled his garden full of seeds...and when his garden began to grow...it was like a garden full of snow, and when the snow began to melt, it was like a ship without a belt..._

_....began to sail...like a bird...without a tail..._  
...a penknife...in my back...  
...began to bleed... 

He closed his eyes so tight it made his head ache, and inhaled the perfume of his bag, and thought, _I'll wake up soon, it's the LSD, it has to be the LSD, I will just, wake up soon........_

 

**light and shadow**

 

Camille's singing trailed off. 

Leander didn't wake up.

He was finding it impossible to fall asleep to begin with.

It wasn’t cold, but he drew the bedclothes up tight around him, and wished for more blankets. He felt...exposed. The entire Sphere was watching him, and the stone walls were studded with invisible eyes.

He could press the button, say he was cold. If he needed anything, that was what Theren had said, and so what if he just needed a blanket? 

But that was chicken. That would really be to see Theren, a sort of familiar face, and that was chicken. Need was chicken. And chicken was dangerous. 

He would just be cold, then.

It went in phases. He would begin to drift off, into that warm gray place where there were no thoughts, but just before he fell asleep he would remember where he was. It was a shock, like falling very suddenly into cold dark water, and a freezing heat would smash into his stomach, and he would be absolutely awake, eyes wide and cringing away from the awful vast space of the Gallery, punctuated by the rows of iron bars.

_Oberon._

He gave up and tried to imagine him, and there were only those eyes, and an impression of long white hands, terrible strength. His mouth. He couldn't imagine Oberon's mouth. He tried, and his mind produced an image of his mother's unspeakable wound, gaping open in nightmare red. 

He tried to hold onto that, to hurt, to grieve. 

He couldn't.

It seemed so far away. Earth. Death.

His mother...it seemed that her life had always ended that way. He had always known it all his life, deep in his bones. He had expected it.

To die, that way. Unzipped. Unfolded.

How would it be, to die that way?

That was a mistake, that thought.

His brain latched onto that, producing a wet screenplay on the backs of his eyelids. He saw those long white hands, and it seemed that his skin was frantic, suddenly, aching for friction, and there was a wrench down his spine that made him slide deeper into the bed, squirming. 

_Will I work for him?_

_Sort of._

But what would Oberon...The Septarch...do? 

Sacrifice him to the devil? Make him work in a factory, or something? 

That would explain the medical exams. 

But why children, for manual labor?

_That's not it, Leander,_ said that wise sarcastic adult voice that he only heard at night. _You remember that execution you saw?_

The man had been on the newsscreens for weeks, his photograph usually printed about descriptions of his sins, maddeningly vague: _abominations against children._

The first public execution in three years.

People had come from as far away as Bethany to see it. Leander's entire school had gone. 

Attendance had been mandatory. 

The man was just a man, with the kind of face no one looked at twice. His expression had been frantic, and yet, at the same time, oblivious. Like he had been looking at a different world than the narrow view from the stake he was bound to, the jeering crowds of pious onlookers.

_So what does that have to do with it?_ Leander asked the voice. 

It didn't answer. 

Not in words, anyway.

He got a shadowy image, more a sensation, of a sticky ritual performed under the cover of darkness. There were whispered threats, tears, terror, and that desperate wonderful panic took him again. He dug his heels hard into the mattress, twisted the sheet in his hands.

_I don't care how beautiful he is. He's a bastard. He killed my mother._

He gritted his teeth, determined to find the rage that had to be there, somewhere. He found only frustration, and inappropriate and intense anger at Soren. 

Not Oberon. 

Soren.

_Why didn't you just let him take me? What did you think, that you would punch him in the mouth like the neighborhood bully and he would start to cry and go home? Why did you have to do that?_

_Now, I’m supposed to hate him, whether I want to or not. I'm supposed to._

_And I don't hate him, and so because of you I'm a failure, a traitor._

_Couldn't you have just have let him take me? Then, I wouldn't have to pretend to feel guilty..._

He couldn’t find it, the guilt. He was intensely sorry she was gone, but not.......guilty, exactly. The murder was like something that he'd dreamed, like everything else on Earth.

This was real.

He'd always known there was a place like this, behind the slogans and the crosses, crouching hidden underneath everything. He'd always known the State was like a group of children armed with sticks and stones, playing at cruelty with no idea where to even begin. 

_Emperor of All Things Unseen._

At least here, there were no illusions. The Septarch was vicious and he didn't pretend to be anything else. 

Here, there would be no amateur cruelty.

There was a strange comfort in that.

Leander closed his eyes.

There were more that threats in his dreams, but after he woke up he would tell himself he didn't remember it.

After a while, he would begin to believe it.

 

**addict**

 

The boy.

The boy was crazy and desperate and damned.

He had asked for it, deserved it, craved it. He was a death addict and he would come, pleading, with eyes the color of the green sun and hair the color of espresso and skin like warm wet silk.

Warm. Wet. Virgin.

Silk.

The boy smelled of tea leaves, and he needed darkness. He dreaded it and craved it, because it was inside him already, burning him, and he longed to be devoured. The boy was prey. He was a skein of emptiness, potential pain waiting for teeth.

_Dragon, dragon, burning bright, in this temple of the night._

_Eat me alive. Swallow me._

Wasn't that how it had happened?

Oberon sighed. He groped behind him for the leather case, and fumbled it open. He loaded a needle and knotted the tourniquet, pulled it tight with his teeth. There was a song that went like that, wasn't there? _Tasting rubber, tasting you, in the dying air..._

The boy. The boy with his kitten face and curious eyes, frightened, but eager too. Curiosity. Cat.

He shot up far too much heroin and lay gasping. He could hear his mechanical heart pistoning far too quickly, whining in gear-stripping protest. He ignored it. It wasn't as if it would kill him.

Heroin. Something so deadly from something so innocent. Flowers.

Sylvia Plath had called them _little bloody skirts._ The skirts of women raped.

She hadn't said anything about little boys. 

Perhaps in her reality that sticky possibility had not existed. 

_Forget about the boy._

"Septarch,” he said. The word cut his lips, and he swallowed the taste of something purple and sharp. 

The Emperor of All Things Unseen. That was so much to be the god of that it frightened him, sometimes. The Devil. He was The Devil, if there was one at all.

"Am I, am I?" he asked no one in particular. He climbed off his bed and knelt on the floor, buried his face in the bed, and shouted I hate you, muffled, into the bedclothes. 

He sat up, stumbled to his feet.

It had to stop. No one could see him like this.

The boy.

He was nothing. He would collapse the way all the others did, into tears and revulsion, begging for something that Oberon had never been able to give. Mercy.

_Forget about the boy._

“What boy?” he mumbled to himself, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. _What boy? Which boy?_

There had been hundreds of boys.

And only this one had ever looked him in the eye.

He turned, nearly falling, and struck out at the air. No. No.

"Something's wrong, something's wrong, something's wrong," he chanted, over and over to himself.

But there wasn’t anything wrong. He wouldn't let there be anything, anything, _anything_ wrong.

He left his room, walking crooked and crazy, and the heroin bit him with nuclear teeth and flung him headlong into the wall. He slashed at it, blind and snarling. He was dangerous now, oh yes. He liked to feel dangerous, and he stood there for a minute or so, feeling this soft, lethal amusement. 

He meant to go to the Zoo, or the Crypt, maybe, but the drug lured him into a black and red place that pulsed with hunger and submission. 

And he was at the entrance to the Gallery, with no idea how he'd gotten there. 

 

Oberon stood in the archway that led into the Gallery, listening intently. He couldn't hear the boy at all, but his scent was here, faint and dormant. Sleeping. 

It was absolutely lightless. He adjusted his sight, his eyelids pulling tight and smooth across the artificial lenses, and the room blinked into focus, the colors dim but discernable.

The soles of his boots were synthetic rubber, soundless on the stone floor. He walked past the cages. He could see the ghosts of children there, cringing away as he passed, cradling wounds, mouths silently gaping. They were whores, all of them, with their whining, pouting, pleading with wet lips and wide eyes. He wished he could give them flesh again. He could do it so much better if he'd had the chance to go over it, to go over them, one more time.

Only the last two cages on the right were occupied. Camille, smelling of gardenias and madness. And the last cage, rich with the warm, bright new aroma of sleeping boy.

The Septarch stopped in front of Leander's cage. His hands closed around the bars, and he pressed his forehead against them, inhaled deeply. It was an orange scent, copper and salt, and there was the sharp tang of sweat and fear underneath.

"Wait," Oberon whispered, trying out the word, trying to make it both order and plea. He couldn't make his voice sound like the boy’s. He wanted to break open the doors, take this boy in his hands, wake him, terrify him. 

_Wait for what? Didn't you know what you were asking?_

He touched the keypad, and the door slid soundlessly open.

The boy murmured in his sleep. One hand slid off the edge of the bed, his fingertips resting on the floor. He had torn off his white shirt. It was flung carelessly across the back of the single chair. Oberon picked it up, held it to his face for a moment, took a tiny fold of silk between his teeth and chewed at it, wet it with his tongue before he dropped it over the chair again.

He stopped inches away from the boy. He leaned close, and his hair swung over his shoulder and brushed the skin of the boy's narrow chest. He froze, not even breathing, but the boy didn't move. 

Oberon bent closer, until he could feel Leander's breath against his neck. "Wait,” he whispered again, trying to get it right, the sound, and the pitch. Still wrong. He brought his face so close his eyelashes grazed the boy's forehead, breathing him in. His hands were coming up, open.

_No. You don't touch them. Not the first night._

But maybe...he wouldn't have to.

His hands went to his waist, and he keyed open his belt.

 

**torture without touch**

 

"Wake up."

It was barely a whisper, but it sounded like an explosion, and Leander was awake, freezing and knotted and terrified. He turned his head, and there was only a shadow. "What--"

"Don't talk. Not a word. Get on the floor. On your back."

He didn't understand, and he was up already, and it was cold enough to collapse his lungs, and he sat on the floor and lay down, awkwardly, the stone like ice under the bare skin of his back. 

His teeth were rattling together, and he thought dimly, He's here, in here, with me. He's in here with me. 

He couldn't see him. He couldn't see anything. He heard a faint stirring sound from Camille's cell, and part of him wanted to call out to her, but he didn't dare. Not a word.

He wanted to cry, but he was too scared to cry. The entire thing seemed too vivid, and he wasn't even sure it was actually happening. It might have been a nightmare. That was what it felt like, anyway.

He just lay there, and thought, Maybe this is all he wants. Just to scare me.

"Put your legs up. Hold them together, straight up."

He tried. It made him want to fall over sideways, and he tried spreading his arms out to balance. He was so afraid that he was almost numb, and unbelievably, he was still so sleepy he had to blink furiously to keep his eyes open.

"No. Keep your hands down. And move faster than that."

He managed it, finally. He was trembling, all over, and he could feel it already, the tension in his stomach muscles, in the small of his back.

"You can do better than that. Straight up. Point your toes."

That was so much worse that this game couldn't really be happening, it couldn't, and the pain was there, in the tendons behind his knees, in his thighs, a dull slow burn, and he had to force his knees not to bend.

But there was something underneath all of that. This desire, this need, to do it absolutely right.

"Now count. Count to two hundred."

Leander didn't understand, and he just lay there, and he whispered, "What?" again.

"Count. It’s not that difficult. You start with one, remember?" came the voice again, sarcastic, amused, but something else, too, like anger.

_It is you. It's you. Couldn't I just see you? If I could see you I might understand what it is that you want..._

"One," Leander said, and something was crushing him, like an explosion deep in his chest, and his eyes were stinging. 

_He can see me. I know he can. What do I look like, lying here like this? Do I look scared? Do I look as scared as I am?_

He made it to _forty-six_ and his knees bent by themselves, and he heard Oberon make a noise like a hiss. "Hold your hand up."

He did, shaking, and something brushed across his fingers, and he caught it, and his fingers couldn't understand it. It felt like a long thick heavy strip of leather. Then he did, he knew, and he pulled his hand away like he'd been burned. 

_No. He can’t. No._

"Get your legs straight again. Count."

"I...what...what number was I on," he said, and his voice had a new rhythm, and it shuddered in time with his heartbeat.

Oberon laughed. "One. You’re on one. And it's five hundred, now."

He didn't have to start over again.

His spine was one long string of pain, and it kept pulling his head up, and the front of his neck and his shoulders and everything, and he couldn't even think about his legs anymore.

He didn't remember what anything else had been like. He had been doing this all his life, and his lips were moving, and he could hear counting, but he was sure it wasn't him anymore. The numbers were coming from the walls, from the air, and someone said, five hundred, and the counting stopped, and he was just saying five hundred over and over again, and he couldn't remember what number came next, and he wanted to scream.

"Put your legs down."

He couldn't, at first, and then he collapsed, and he couldn't breathe until he became afraid of what might happen if he didn't speak. "Now what?"

"Get back in bed."

He did, half-crawling, half-clawing, and he curled up there, with his hands tight behind his knees. 

He thought, _please, no more,_

and the pain was already fading, cheating him. 

Anything that had hurt that much shouldn't have gone away so quickly. 

He felt like he hadn't been suffering at all, like he'd dreamed it.

There was a deafening metallic scrape, and a slam that stopped him breathing until he realized 

what it was--the door to his cell, opening again and slamming closed.

"Sweet dreams," Oberon told him, and then there was only silence.

He didn't sleep. He lay there, one aching skein of attention, waiting for a sound that never came.

 

Oberon stumbled out of the Gallery, aching, furious. He was panting, taking shallow violent breaths through clenched teeth. He keyed the door shut and closed his eyes, and left that way, following the scent of dark, of damp.

Camille listened until she could no longer hear him. She turned over, and stared into the dark, towards Leander. Her teeth drew blood from the inside of her cheek. "I hate you," she whispered, but she didn't know which one of them it was meant for--Leander, or herself.

 

**fetish**

 

Oberon ducked into the Worm Chamber, closed and locked the door behind him. His hands were already at the clasp of his collar. He peeled off the synthvinyl suit and dropped it, shuddering, tugged off his boots and stood naked.

The room was ready, as he had ordered. It was a circular shaft, thirty feet across, with a stark four-foot ledge that ran along the wall. A steel walkway led from the doorway to a rectangular platform in the center of the room. Both of these were lit by tiny running lights. Below that, it was a forty-foot drop to the floor, in total darkness.

The platform and the connecting walkway were still charged. The path tingled under his feet. 

He reached the platform, and lay down there, listening to them. They didn't make sounds, exactly, but there was a sense of motion, below him, as though the entire floor were undulating, busy in a slow irrevocable way. 

The domed ceiling was so far above him, only a shadow.

His left hand found the controls and rested there, trembling.

Leander's hand, fingertips brushing the stone floor of his cell. Leander's hand on the controls, covering his own.

He began to program the sequence. He set the timer for four hours, changed his mind and moved it up to six. He chose the lowest possible speed of descent, and activated it.

For an instant there was nothing, then a faint jolt as the walkway slid out of its housing in the side of the platform, retracted into the wall just below the doorway. He turned his head, and he could see his clothes there, dimly, in a crumpled heap of vinyl and chrome. 

No way back, now. Even he couldn't jump fifteen feet across empty space, not with any hope of landing on the ledge. 

_If I pushed you, in here, little boy. If I pushed you in here, and you didn't break your neck on the way down...would you scream? Would you feel them, and cry out for mercy? Would it echo in this room, your screaming?_  
.  
..my screaming? 

The platform hummed under him, and began to move, sinking. He could hear the gears whining, muffled by inches of stone. The current was still running, just strong enough to sting the softest parts of his skin. He flexed his shoulders, turned over onto his stomach and pressed his face, his tongue against the metal.

Ten feet. Eight feet. Six feet.

The descent paused, and the controls chimed at him, letting him know he had ten seconds to abort the sequence and send the platform up again. Otherwise, it would sink down to the bottom of the shaft--and stay there for the next six hours, leaving him there no matter what he did to the controls.

He waited. 

It chimed again, and began sinking. 

The sequence was now irreversible. 

The air was colder, suddenly, and so damp he could feel water condensing on his skin. 

The platform settled, clicked into place a few inches below the layer of wet soil covering the floor. Clods of dirt crumbled in, sprinkling his arms, his legs, and his back. He curled up on his side, his head pillowed on his arm, dragged his free hand through the dirt. The electricity that kept them away from the platform was switched off. 

In fifteen minutes, the six cylinders set vertically in the walls would begin to open, one by one. Each was ten feet in diameter, filled with thousands and thousands of worms. When each one had been opened, the room would be three feet deep in them.

There were caterpillars, centipedes, infinite variations on the earthworm--every species from the quadrant that couldn't swallow him. The stings wouldn't harm him, of course, although there would be pain, agony even...but pain wasn't the purpose of this chamber. 

He had other rooms to suit him when he felt the hooks of that particular appetite.

The few worms that were already there had begun to investigate him. He left them there as a prelude, for psychological reasons, even though the only one he ever subjected to this particular torture was himself.

He wondered if they remembered him, or if he was a new discovery to them every time. 

They were nuzzling cold at his toes. One of them wriggled against the back of his neck, under his hair. It was no bigger than his little finger. Once the pipes opened, the big ones would come in, some of them thicker than his arm.

There was a shudder at that thought, of either dread or anticipation. He wasn't sure which.

He groped in the dark and found a tiny one, an earthworm as soft as a newborn’s liver. He laid it across his lips. Horror. Lust. It wriggled there, wandered cold up along his cheekbone, across the bridge of his nose, leaving a damp sticky trail.

There was a pneumatic hiss, and the sound of grating metal.

The first cylinder was opening.

He was breathing harder, faster. 

There was the sudden ticklish scrape of myriad tiny legs across the back of his knee. A millipede. He pressed one muddy hand to his mouth, bit hard at his palm, shuddering. More. He would be buried in them, soon, and there was no way out. He turned, looked up at the dim glow of the doorway, miles above him. No way out.

It happened the way it always did. He felt two of them, then four, then hundreds. The fourth cylinder opened, then the fifth. The prick of more miniature legs. The rough fur of a caterpillar, low on his stomach, and the bright agonizing flare of the first sting, in the delicate skin just below his navel. And the slick cold soft ones, always those, and he spread out his arms, and they were all over him.

Panic. Only for an instant, and, then, submission.

There were no individual sensations. It was a blur, thousand lips, a thousand fingers, everywhere, and tiny vivid flashes of pain that wound together into a single merciless burning.

He closed his eyes, and one of them oozed along his eyelid, curling icy behind his ear, then a rush of them, and he couldn't open his eyes at all. His face was covered.

He was nothing to them. Only landscape, only architecture.

Leander's ghost was above him, in the doorway, and he broke open the casing for the keypad.

_Wait,_ Oberon cried up at him, and this time his voice was just like the boy's. 

It was too late. 

The boy pulled out bright loops of wire, and flung them down into the shaft, where they were lost, the worms twining around them.

Now the platform would never rise, ever again. 

_Mercy. Please,_ he thought.

Delightfully, there was none. 

The comfort in that closed over him like a warm cocoon.

Oberon opened his mouth, and ceased to breathe. He didn't need to, not anymore. 

Not here.

 

**contact**

 

The chiming of the platform brought him out of it. It was the warning that it would begin its ascent in four minutes, so that he would be on it if he had crawled out into the rest of the room.

Oberon struggled up onto his hands and knees, his hair hanging in his face, clotted with dirt. He crawled over to the platform and collapsed there. The current clicked on, and he bit back a cry at the burn of it on his bitten skin. 

The worms were fleeing the electricity, oozing away from him. He started breathing again, and his lungs ached, fighting to stay closed. Inertia. The tendency of a nonmoving object to stay in that state...was that da Vinci? Einstein?

The jolt and the platform began to rise, more quickly than it had lowered. His arm hung over the edge, his fingers loose and streaked with dirt. There was earth gritting in his teeth, and he was sticky, filthy. He spit, licking mud from his lips. At the top Cayle would be waiting, the only attendant who ever saw him this way. 

The plank extended itself, locked into the side of the platform. For an instant he saw Leander standing there, in the shadows of the archway, and he raised his hands and covered his face, trembling. When he looked again it was only Cayle, old and bent in his violet armor. He was the ninth Cayle, each a clone of his predecessor. This one was in his sixties, and he would need to be repaired...replaced...soon. 

The syringe in Cayle’s hand was loaded with a combination of antihistamines and antivenins. The solution would have killed an unaltered human being, if the stings hadn't done so already.

Oberon couldn't stand--neurotoxins couldn't kill him, but they made him perilously clumsy--and Cayle went across the walkway, stepping carefully, glancing below him in apprehension.

"You'd never feel them," Oberon told him, reaching out for the syringe. "It's a long drop."

Leander was already awake when Theren came in. He was holding something folded, and he had a grim look on his face. "He wants to see you," he told the boy. He held the clothes through the bars. 

"Put these on. You can go behind the curtain, if you want."

Leander stared at him. He couldn't breathe, and his heart started slamming so fast he thought it would burst. 

It was too soon. He wasn't even used to the Gallery yet. He couldn't take any more input, any more terror. He didn't have the energy to be in the same room as Oberon. Not again. Not after last night.

He stood up to take the clothes, and his exhausted aching knees buckled and dropped him back onto the edge of the bed.

Camille laughed hoarsely, sitting in the floor in the far corner of her cell, rocking. “Poor Leander," she said, and laughed again. "Does it still hurt? I had to start over three times. I had to get to seven hundred before he was satisfied."

Theren sighed. Now he understood, better than he wanted to. He keyed open the door and stepped in. He shook out the bodysuit, dark red synthetic that was shiny as blood, and he pulled Leander to his feet. "I don't want to dress you in front of her," he said, tilting his head towards Camille, "but I have about half an hour to do this, and we still have to go to the lab first."

"I don't care about her," Leander said numbly. "The lab?"

Theren was pulling him out of the white silk. "He wants you changed," he said.

Leander tore himself away from Theren, his voice high and faint. "Changed?” Changed how? His imagination spun frantically--a mutant, a reptile, one of those brainless things they used to do road work--and came up with the worst possible result--a blank.

Theren pulled him back again, pulled off the silk pants with businesslike efficiency. “Don’t panic. It won't hurt. He wants you painted, and he wants them to make your hair longer."

"Why?" 

_You know why. Yes you do. Don't give me that look,_ whispered his little sarcastic voice.

Theren stood him up, muscled him into the bodysuit and zipped it up from waist to neck. Over that there was a dark red cloak, and there were red boots. "Nobody asks him why. We just do it, whatever it is."

He pulled Leander's wrists behind him, took a set of restraints from his belt and clamped them around the boy's wrists. 

_I won’t do this. Jesus, I'm not a goddamned convict. No way am I going to do this._

Leander hissed, and twisted around, teeth bared. 

"Don't," Theren snapped. "I don't like this any more than you do, and I don't want to have to drug you, you got that?"

He pulled Leander out of the cell, hurried him down the corridor. 

Camille waved bye-bye solemnly, with the tips of her fingers. 

 

They clamped something over his head that tingled and itched, and held him down and put silver paint around his eyes, on his lips. Leander struggled at first, until Theren took his face in his hands and stared at the boy, without saying a word. 

He grew still, and pretended none of it was happening, and they unfastened whatever-it-was from his head and his hair spilled out, past his shoulders now. It was strange. He thought he might like it, after a while.

They brushed his new hair and snipped at it, cut it in a careful angle along his jawline, and sprayed something in it that smelled like candy, and gave him back to Theren. 

He caught a brief glimpse of himself in a mirror. 

_I look like either an angel, or a whore,_ he thought, wound up in a strange tangle of wonder and dismay.

 

"Now," Theren said, rushing him through a long vast corridor with the same torches, and alien letters painted on the walls, "You look at the floor unless somebody tells you otherwise. You don’t say anything. If he tells you to do anything, you do it, no matter what it is. You got all that?"

_Couldn't you tell me it's going to be okay? Couldn't you tell me what the hell this is all about?_

He had a terribly vivid sense of Soren, then. His mother. He could smell her, could hear her voice. 

“Why do you do this? Why is this your life?” 

Theren stared at him, and something cold settled over his face. "You won't last a week," he said.

_Fuck you too,_ Leander thought. 

Theren opened a door and shoved Leander into a new room, hard enough to make the boy stumble.

It was a wide round room, damp and shadowy with a low ceiling, and things were painted on the walls that made Leander glad to look at the floor. He watched his feet in the red boots, watched the hem of his cloak, and he let Theren push him forward, stop him, and he stood there.

"Closer,” the Septarch said. It was the same rich easy voice, and it made the boy shudder, with a thrill that was either murderous or terrified. He knew that voice. It had lived in his closet in their old house--

\---and that was as much as he remembered.

He stepped closer, until he was stopped by a stone dais in front of his feet. He knew Oberon was only a few feet away from him, and that if he looked up...

"Look at me," Oberon said, reading his mind.

Leander did. It was the eyes, again, as black as space without stars, and he tried not to fall, this time, clenching his bound hands behind his back, under the cloak. 

_You look like exactly what you are, and I still keep looking. Like I want to figure it out, after a while, like one of those paintings of a waterfall flowing uphill where you can't quite put your finger on the trick._

The Septarch was sitting in an elaborate chair, studded with controls and monitors. He was dressed in black velvet robes, and a bruise the shape of a starburst marked the back of one languid hand. He raised that hand to his jawline, brushed the backs of his fingers there, as though deep in thought. 

He studied the boy for a long time, taking in the vinyl, the paint. 

_Does he even know my name? What is he thinking?_

Leander was shaking, but he refused to look away. Something was happening in his chest, deep in under his lungs. It felt like his insides were rearranging themselves, or struggling to press closer to his skin, closer to those eyes.

"They did exactly as I ordered," Oberon said to Theren, as though Leander wasn't there. "I am...very happy with this."

“We exist to serve you,” Theren murmured, pretending to be pleased, but Oberon was looking at Leander again, his eyes heavy-lidded and venomous.

"Leander Schaiden," he said, almost to himself. 

His name, in that voice. It was like a blow. It was sorcery. 

"Tell me this...Leander....why did you tell me to wait?"

Leander was frozen, and he was afraid he wouldn't be able to speak at all. 

"Because," he began, and realized he had no idea why he'd done it. Panic. "Because...I guess...I wasn't finished looking at you," he said, weakly. 

So much for his marvelous brain. 

The eyes were on him still, and they held him there, and he could not fall, even if he wanted to.

_Great. He'll think you're being a smart-ass, and he'll probably splatter you all over this room,_ he thought, caught in vertigo. 

Something flashed into the Septarch’s eyes. Amusement? He raised his hand, covered his painted mouth for an instant. Then he nodded, slowly, as though he had reached some decision. "You have your wish," he said, quietly. "I will be the last thing you ever see, Leander."

He stood, so quickly Leander cringed and stepped back, but he only turned his back on the room, gestured at Theren over his shoulder. "Theren. Twenty-one hundred hours. Leave him like that, exactly like that."

The boy’s blood crystallized. He pulled at the restraints as hard as he could, and he wanted to scream, but his lungs were empty. 

He was an appointment. 

An appointment for WHAT?

He would go absolutely insane unless someone explained it. 

Theren's hand closed on his shoulder tightly enough to bruise. "Yes, Septarch." 

 

"He won't kill you tonight," Camille said.

Leander was lying on his bed with one arm covering his eyes. He could still feel the restraints around his wrists, even though Theren had taken them off almost an hour ago. He turned over, propped himself up on his elbow. "What?"

"He won't kill you tonight," she said again, speaking slowly and loudly as if Leander were deaf. "He wouldn't have had them dress you if he wanted to kill you right away. This is where he puts the ones he wants to keep for a while."

Leander thought about that. He thought about Jyana. Mister, can you open the door? "And the others?"

"If they're not here, they're probably already dead, or they will be, the first time he sees them. He separates us by quick or slow, but he kills us all eventually. No one ever leaves."

He bit his lip. "But you're still here."

"Not for long. I'm too old for him already. For a while, I had them shave me, here," she said, pressing her knuckles against her groin, "And that worked for a while, but...not for long."

Leander shuddered, disturbed. "Why?” he said, but she didn't answer. She just kept on, as though she were following a script.

"When I first came, there were two other kids here. They were brother and sister. The girl, Julia...she must have been just eight or nine...he fitted her."

"Fitted?"

Camille shook her head, refusing to elaborate. "She did something to make him angry...I don't know what. She was in that cell, the one across from you. He fitted her and had them bring her back here like that. It took her a week to die. She wasn't even screaming after a while. It sounded like a wolf, that noise she was making."

Leander didn’t say anything. He couldn't have, even if he'd wanted to.

"It took them two more days to take the body away. I can still smell her," she added.

He deliberately did not sniff to see if he could still smell her, too. "You said there were two kids."

Something strange and savage crossed her face. 

For an instant, he almost understood her. 

Then, the potential was gone, and the schizophrenia descended across her face, like a veil, like an event no one at the party was willing to discuss. He got a flash of people pretending ignorance, disinterest, turning away smoothly into elegant and less dangerous conversations.

“The other one’s name was Lucius. He was sixteen. He almost never picks anybody that old, but Lucius was...beautiful. Almost like you. But he was evil."

“Evil how?” Leander wanted to know, but she ignored this.

“I don’t know what happened to him. One night he just...never came back." 

She was lying. 

Leander's eyes were wide, but he tried to make his voice scornful. "I don't believe you," he said.

Camille shrugged. "He eats some of them. Or he'll take the ones he wants to keep a while, like us, into the throne room and make us watch him kill the other ones. Every one of us is dead already."

"So, if he isn't going to kill me tonight, what will he do?"

There was something evil in her voice when she answered. "Wait and see," she said.

He turned over, his back to her. He put his hands over his ears, but he still heard when she started to sing again.

 

**unknown appetites**

 

When Theren came to take him to the Septarch he wouldn't speak to the boy at all. He didn't restrain him this time. Leander wondered if that was a good sign or a bad one.

He led Leander up a seemingly endless flight of spiral stairs. He stopped outside the door, keyed it open, and gestured for the boy to go inside. "Should I kneel, or something?" Leander said, half-joking.

Theren was already leaving. "He'll let you know," he said over his shoulder.

Well. Leander stepped inside. The door closed behind him. Automatic. 

The first room was absolutely medieval, complete with fireplace and thick tapestries. He knew better than to examine the pictures too closely. He already had nightmares enough on his own. There was a table with two chairs, with places set for two people, and covered platters of food. The smell set his stomach to growling furiously.

He didn't see the Septarch. There was an archway to his right; he went towards it, and looked inside. A bedroom, with a vast iron bed. Another fireplace. 

There was a statue, that seemed to be a man turning into a bird turning into an engine. The firelight did strange things to it, seeming to make it contort, its mouths gaping.

Curiosity drew him closer to it. It was dark blue metal, and he had never seen anything like it. His hand came up to touch it. He ran his fingertips along shiny metal teeth, a geometric feather, and a knotted conglomeration that might have been flesh or cable.

"Leander."

He jumped, snatched his hand away from the statue as though it had burned him. 

The voice was behind him. He wanted to turn around, but he couldn't.

“Leander was the name of a boy who lived on Earth a very long time ago. He was in love with a priestess named Hero who lived on the opposite side of a river. Every night she would leave a torch in her window to guide him, and he would swim across the river to be with her."

The voice was closer, now. "They would make love, every night. It went on for almost a year."

"Until one night, when she didn't leave a torch. He tried to swim across anyway, and he drowned."

Oberon was right behind him, now, his voice very nearly in Leander’s ear. "Don't place faith," he whispered. "It's almost always...fatal."

Leander did turn, then, and Oberon was so close he backed away, against the statue. The Septarch raised his hand--Leander gritted his teeth over a scream, but Oberon only reached over the boy’s shoulder, and laid his hand on the statue, almost lovingly. "Do you like it?"

Leander swallowed hard. "It's...um...it's beautiful. Where did you get it?"

“I made it,” Oberon said, tracing the agonized lines. His nails were long, and dark gray. They looked unnervingly...functional. He scratched them against the metal, lightly, and shuddered, his eyes drifting closed.

His fingernails.

Leander forced himself to look away from them. He spoke more to distract himself than anything else. "What does it...does it mean anything?"

Oberon looked at him, then, and he was falling again. "Change is almost never for the better," he whispered to the boy. And he inclined his head, towards the table. 

Leander supposed that was an order.

He pulled out Leander’s chair, and the boy stood there confused for an instant before he sat down, awkwardly, staring at his hands. Oberon didn't speak. He took the boy's plate and filled it with dripping pieces of pink meat and something that looked like tiny black marbles. Leander eyed it. "What is that?"

The Septarch raised his eyebrow, seeming to be amused at that, and set it in front of him. "Taste it, and if you like it, maybe I'll tell you."

Leander tried. Whatever it was rolled off his fork. He picked up his spoon instead, and put a tiny bit of the stuff on his tongue. The taste was dark, salty. He chewed, hesitantly, and decided he liked it. “It’s good. Is it poisonous?"

Oberon smiled at that. Leander watched that, fascinated. He had never seen him smile. His lips were painted, like a woman's, full and curved, but hard at the corners. His teeth were perfectly straight and white, but very long. "It's caviar," he explained.

Whatever that was. Some kind of mushroom, maybe.

Leander started to take a bigger bite then set his spoon down. "Camille say you eat little kids," he said, all in a rush, before he could stop himself.

Oberon cut himself a bite of meat, lifted it to his mouth and chewed reflectively. "Does she?"

He cut another bite, stabbed it with his fork and held it out to Leander.

Leander stared at, then looked back at the Septarch, searching his face for any clues. Oberon's face was absolutely blank. 

If he tells you to do something, you do it, no matter what it is, Theren said in his brain, softly.

Leander opened his mouth, took the meat from the fork with his teeth. He held it in his mouth as though it were a live spider. His stomach knotted, and his throat closed. He gagged, and he gritted his teeth and drew in a hard desperate breath, and forced himself to chew it.

 

It was the softest meat he'd ever had, and the taste made the caviar seem like synthetic protein cubes in comparison. He'd never tasted anything like it. It was quite possibly his new, favorite, food. Whatever it was. 

He swallowed twice, and cut himself another bite from his own plate. 

Oberon smiled as though he'd just learned a secret. 

He lifted a black bottle, poured something green into two crystal glasses. "It's absinthe," he said, before the boy could ask.

Leander tasted it. It was sweet, but bitter, like licorice, and it did interesting things with the flavor of the meat.

He finished everything Oberon gave him, and the absinthe made him sleepy and dizzy. He drew his knees up to his chest, wrapped his arms around them, his feet in the chair. "What should I call you?"

"Don't you know my name?"

Leander nodded. "Theren said I should call you the Septarch."

Oberon thought about that. "That would be a little like me calling you the Slave."

Leander hugged his knees tighter. "If I'm your slave, what kind of, um, work will I be doing?"

"Say my name," the Septarch ordered him, so sharply that the boy flinched.

"Oberon," he whispered, and it did something to his insides, that same shifting that had happened in the throne room.

"No. Not like that."

"Oberon," he said again, more clearly, and he licked at his lips, tasting bitter and sweet.

"Come here."

Leander moaned, afraid he couldn't stand, but he managed it, and went to stand in front of the Septarch, his hand on the table to steady him. 

The Septarch reached for him. The boy cringed, tears stinging in his scorched throat. _If he touches me, I'll go crazy, he thought._

Oberon touched him for the first time, putting his hand on the boy’s cheek. Leander made a soft sound, as though he might begin crying. Oberon moved his hand down to the boy's shoulder, and then grasped Leander and lifted him, and set him down on his knee. 

Leander was rigid, shaking so hard his teeth were chattering. His eyes were tightly closed. Oberon leaned close, put his teeth against the boy's neck, licked at his skin with the tip of his tongue, bit him there hard enough to bruise. "This is the kind of work you'll be doing," he said, before he moved to the boy's mouth. 

The boy's head fell back. His hands and his mouth opened, and he tasted caviar and wormwood. 

"Say my name," he whispered, against the boy's lips.

"Oberon," Leander breathed, and leaned into his hands.

It was over, then, and those black eyes were on him, and Oberon set him back on his feet. "Go. The door's open, and Theren is waiting for you," he said, abruptly.

Leander opened his eyes. Then he realized what he'd heard, and something broke in his chest, and his feet were carrying him to the door before he realized he'd moved.

The Septarch had turned away from him, and was staring into the fire.

Leander stopped in the doorway. "What does fitted mean?" he blurted out.

"Go."

What he heard in Oberon's voice, barely leashed, made his hands fumble frantically at the door, and he closed it too hard behind him.

Theren was sitting in the hallway, his back against the wall. He raised his head, and there were tired lines at the corners of his mouth. He tried to smile. It didn't work. "Are you all right?"

"No," said Leander. Then, he was crying again.

 

**amychophilia**

 

Oberon closed and locked the door to his office. He sat down, picked up the boy's journal.

Holiness.

What did that mean, to a fourteen-year-old boy? A boy who hadn't screamed, who had tried to kiss him back?

He opened it and began to read.

The first page of the journal was emblazoned with the words: 

_EXTREME SECRET. IF YOU READ THIS YOU ARE CURSED. IT'S VOODOO._

This was followed by a drawing of a little cartoon man with a look of extreme anguish on his face. Presumably he had been cursed. It was voodoo, of course.

Oberon smiled at that. He had never seen anything like this. It was like...looking into the boy's mind.

He turned the page.

 

_March 18_

_Motherfuckers. Because of all that time I missed in counseling I have to do twice as much work as everybody else. The teacher called me stupid in front of everybody.  
She's a goddamn bitch. Her cunt is probably sewn together._

 

Counseling? Oberon frowned. He kept up with current events closely enough to know what counseling would be like on Christian Earth. And it seemed that the boy had a violent streak. Nice.

 

_March 2_

_Something bad happened. This other kid he_

 

Something was scrawled out heavily here, the penstrokes deep enough to gouge into the paper. Oberon could make out two words: _said...laughed._

 

_...and then I hit him smash bang on the mouth. His lips sort of squished and there was blood squirting everywhere, and it hurt my hand so bad I thought I broke my fingers or something, but it was like I didn’t care if it hurt. It was still happening, that thing that happens, and I could see but everything was flat and nothing was the right color. It was like I was up inside my head and my body was doing stuff all by itself. So he was crying and he didn't try to hit me back or anything. He covered his mouth up with his hand and I hit him again just to see if it would work. And I partly hit his hand and partly his nose. He was just bleeding fucking EVERYWHERE._

_I wonder if maybe I'm possessed._

_I used to think all that was crap that they say to scare you, until this started happening. Probably it is just crap and I'm just insane, because now that I think about it I don't feel guilty. It wasn't exactly a bad thing the only way I would have felt like it was a bad thing is if I'd gotten caught and I didn’t. They would hold you down and let the other kid hit you back. So much for turning the other fucking cheek._

_I keep thinking about it over and over and_

_March 22_

_I scribbled out some of that._

_I should tear out the whole thing because if I ever become a serial killer and they find stuff like this I think you get in even more trouble._

_I try to be scared and feel guilty and just NOT get like that, but sometimes this happy feeling just comes all over me like I just know something wonderful is gonna happen. But that has to do with the fury too. It's so bad_

_They’ll find out what I'm like because they watch you all the time and I'm sure they can see it in my face._

_March 24_

_I drew a picture about it and then burned it because maybe that way I can sort of get it out of my system. That's illegal too because it’s practicing witchcraft. Stupid motherfuckers stupid rules about everything. It didn’t even fucking work anyway._

_I’m always wanting to look in the mirror all the time to see if I look crazy. It has to make me look different somehow._

_It does,_ Oberon thought. _But only other crazy people can see it._

_March 30_

_Got another bootleg game for my computer. Can't write much because I’m busy playing it. It's about this French person who wrote all these sicko books about Sodom. The one they threw in prison and he lived there his whole life. The State would have me reconditioned--in prison for MY whole life if they even knew I have this game._

_April 2_

_Made a copy of the de Sade game and traded it to this kid for an illegal audio disk. It’s the first one I ever had I actually wanted to listen to and it took me twenty minutes to get my computer to play it. This was like music from I think about 2002. I never heard anything like it._

_I love it and it’s wonderful. It's like they feel like I felt when that thing happened. They were like furious because they could tell the Christians were taking over the place and they were like me and they knew what other people like them would be in for once THAT happened. But it happened anyway._

_I looked it up, the history of that year. The Christians couldn’t make any laws then! And they couldn't force anybody to be Christian. They just used a lot of propaganda to try and make you want to be, like that Hitler guy. I thought it had to be made up that they used to not own the whole system but now I know they never could have made music like that otherwise._

_I wish I had lived then instead of now._

_April 3_

_It happened again._

_I was in my room this time. Way earlier this morning in school one of my teachers saw me reading this little thing on autopsies. We weren’t even doing anything in the damn class and everybody else was pulling up junk too but she reached over me and turned my computer off and gave me one of those long hard mean looks. Like I’m scared of the bitch. That kid I took out was way bigger than her, and he was EXPECTING me to hit him._

_But when it happened I was really pissed off, but not THAT pissed. I'm used to them getting in my business._

_When I got home I was lying here on my bed listening to that disk and it was like an explosion I was SO mad. I was lying kind of curled up on my bed and I dug my fingernails into my thighs and the weirdest thing happened. I got hard. And I was scratching hard enough that I knew it SHOULD be hurting but it didn’t. It felt like my whole skin was connected to my dick._

_I scratched myself all over and I had all these marks. I wish my nails were longer. And I had to sneak a towel past my Mom to clean the come off the bed. It still left a mark even though I wet it and finally I just took off the whole sheet and turned it over. I know Mom wouldn't say anything about it but it’s gross to know your mom knows you do that._

_I had that disk playing the whole time._

_I wish I had pictures of some of the singers. I try to imagine their faces, but I can't really. I guess they're like demons only beautiful. Like Lucifer. He used to be an angel so he has to be beautiful, only evil._

_Maybe...maybe all of them left in a huge spaceship when they knew it were too late for Earth. Maybe they started their own colony and their great-great-great-grandkids are still there. I wonder what it would look like. I wish they would come and get me. Or they could all come here and start a big war and millions of people would defect and join them and fight the State._

_They probably wouldn't want me. I'm too little._

_Yeah, but when THAT happens it's like I could give a shit how little I am. Or I could be a pilot or a computer technician. Or maybe an executioner. I wouldn’t have to be all that big if they were, like, tied up or something._

 

He closed his eyes. He vaguely remembered being a boy, and he had read the legend of King Arthur. 

He had spent weeks searching in manmade woods for the sword in the stone. 

Excalibur. 

He would be the only one who would be able to pull it free. He would be the fulfillment of the prophecy of the once and future king, and he would lead the planet into a golden age. The fact that he had lived with his family in the Samar colony on Mars in a biosphere had conveniently escaped his young mind.

 

_April 6_

_OH MY GOD do you know what I found?!!!_

_I was on the computer trying and trying to find any pictures of any of those singers. Well I found this Christian magazine from 1998 and it was all about how satanic and evil modern music is. (I guess it was modern then.) The text sucked. It sounded just like the same crap they tell you today. But guess what? It had PICTURES!!!_

_I printed them out and cut them out of the stupid text. I named the scary one Lucifer. The other one, the sort of feminine looking one, I named Samael because I think that's the name of another evil angel._

_I stuck them in here to keep them safe because I always have this with me._

_Oberon flipped through the pages. Most of them in the back were blank. He turned the notebook upside down and shook it, gently. Two pieces of paper fluttered out._

_He retrieved one of them from under his desk, flipped them both over and studied them intently._

_He began to laugh, and he laughed so hard and for so long he ended up with his forehead on the edge of his desk, his lungs aching, his eyes streaming._

_No wonder he told you to wait, he thought, gasping._

_He ran them both through the scanner and saved a copy. He tucked them both carefully back into Leander's journal and flipped back to his place._

__madness_ _

__

__Leander could hear Camille even before Theren opened the door to the Gallery. She was howling, and banging something into the bars._ _

__Theren sighed. "Sometimes she...throws stuff. I'll go first._ _

__He went inside, and Leander heard him saying something to Camille in an irritated voice. He caught echoes of it: if you don't want...and you stop...or I'll...he won't..._ _

__She stopped._ _

__Theren gestured Leander inside, led him to his cell. He turned, walking quickly out of the Gallery. "You remember what I said," he told Camille, before he closed the door and locked it._ _

__Camille stood in the center of her cell, with the heels of her hands pressed into her temples. She glared at Leander, with so much hatred that the boy backed away from her. "Camille, I didn't-"_ _

__Camille shrieked, and ran at the bars between them as hard as she could. She bounced off, her neck snapping backwards, and crumpled to the floor. She didn't move._ _

__Leander watched her, wide-eyed. "Camille," he whispered, and he went over and put his foot through the bars to reach her, and poked her gently with the toe of his boot. She didn't even flinch._ _

__He couldn't tell if she was breathing._ _

__He went to his keypad. The red button._ _

__If he didn't push it, she would probably die._ _

__He hesitated a moment. He pushed it once. He sat on his bed, watching her._ _

__She didn't move._ _

__Theren came in almost immediately. "What is it?"_ _

__"It's Camille. She--"_ _

__"Shit," Theren snapped, seeing her on the floor. "What did you say to her?"_ _

__"Nothing," Leander protested._ _

__Theren pulled a portacomm from his belt. "Well, what set her off, then?"_ _

__"How should I know? She's crazy." It felt like a lie as soon as he’d said it. He knew damn well what had set her off, but he wasn’t going to try to explain it to Theren, even though it would only take two little words: she’s jealous._ _

__Theren rolled his eyes and spoke into the receiver. "Cayle. I need you in the Gallery, right now. It's Camille again," he said, clicked it off and keyed open Camille's cell._ _

__Another man came in, much older than Theren, in the same violet uniform. He looked at Camille in disgust. "I can't carry her. You'll have to help me."_ _

__Theren lifted Camille in his arms. She hung limp, her hair covering her face. Neither of them spoke to Leander._ _

__After they were gone the silence was thick, heavy. Leander was hot. He pulled off the red cloak, crumpled it, thought better of it and folded it at the foot of his bed. He couldn't manage the zipper behind his neck to get the vinyl bodysuit off. He struggled out of the boots. That was a little better._ _

__He picked up the cloak, absently raised it to his face. He could smell Oberon there, dark and sweet, like incense and damp earth. He climbed into bed, still holding the cloak, tangling it around his legs._ _

__He fell asleep with his face buried in it._ _

__

__**curiouser and curiouser** _ _

__

__Oberon was typing something into a notepad. Theren waited, without speaking._ _

__Finally, the Septarch said, "I want everything on the boy. All of his records--school, hospital, police--everything. And have them ship all of his things. Compensate whatever's left of his family. And get the genofile on the one that was killed. His mother, I think it was."_ _

__Theren was stunned. Oberon had never ordered anything even remotely like this. "Yes, Septarch," he said, just in time._ _

__Oberon still didn't turn from the screen. He spoke again after a long pause, and his voice was strange. "Does he...does the boy require anything?"_ _

___Yes, you sick bastard. He requires that you hadn't made me murder his mom in front of his eyes. He fucking requires to go home and have a normal life. He requires that you never happened to him._ "I believe he has everything he needs, my Lord."_ _

__"Ask him if he wants anything, then. Give him anything within reason," Oberon said, abruptly. "As soon as you have his things, bring them to me. Day or night. Unless he's here, of course."_ _

__"Of course," Theren said, his voice so dangerously close to being angry that Oberon did look at him, then._ _

__He reached into his belt, to escape the Septarch's look. "You told me to bring you this, my Lord." It was a transparent computer disk. Oberon gestured, and Theren put it on the desk beside the notepad._ _

__"That's all," Oberon said, waving him away._ _

__Theren bowed. He left as quickly as he dared, and he let the door close itself. He was afraid he'd slam it hard enough to break the latch._ _

__He heard Leander's voice. _Why is this your life?__ _

__"I have no fucking idea," he whispered to himself, and hoped he wasn't being recorded._ _

__

__**bait** _ _

__

__Leander was half asleep when Theren came for him._ _

__"How's Camille?" he asked, swinging his feet out of the bed._ _

__"Stitches. She'll be back in a few hours," Theren said, then added, "She'll be all right." Then, his voice odd, he said, "The Septarch asked me if you require anything."_ _

__Leander thought about that. "Like what?"_ _

__"I don't know. He said 'anything within reason.'"_ _

__Anything within reason. Leander considered. He thought briefly of his things on Earth, his odd bits of colored glass and machinery and disks full of coding. No. All of that was beginning to seem like it belonged to someone he had known a long time ago. He had no use for any of it now. "Well...do you think it would be all right if...I mean, if I had some paper, and something to draw with? Colored pencils? I mean, I know they're expensive--"_ _

__Theren laughed. "You'll get them. Any particular kind you like?"_ _

__Leander shrugged. "I never had my own before. I don't know."_ _

__"I'll bring you a couple of things, and you can try them out, and let me know which you like."_ _

__"He won't mind?"_ _

__Theren looked at him. You could ask him for a hovercraft, probably. You could ask him for all the tea in China. Don't you realize he's never given anyone anything before? "I'm sure he won't. Come on."_ _

__This time they dressed Leander in the same clothes, only in dark vivid blue, and they put him in gold paint. "He wants me back this soon?" he asked Theren, and the woman brushing paint on his mouth frowned at him and dabbed at a smudge with the ball of her thumb._ _

__"Apparently," Theren said, vaguely._ _

__"I thought he was mad at me."_ _

__"He might be. I guess we'll know soon enough."_ _

__

__**justice** _ _

__

__He brought Leander to a new room, this time, an office the color of a crypt with a vast black marble desk. Oberon was sitting behind it in a dark leather chair, the gleam of the computer screen flickering in his eyes. He was wearing dark red, a sleek suit of thick cloth, the insignia glittering at his throat, silver links gleaming at each wrist._ _

__He stood, and indicated to Leander to sit in his chair. Leander obeyed him, clumsy, uncertain. Oberon stood behind him. "I have something for you."_ _

__The desk was an odd collage of console and art, with small steel sculptures, and a tiny glass jar with something in fluid that might have been a pair of eyeballs. Leander kept his hands in his lap, afraid to touch anything. "Are you angry at me?" he asked. His voice was faint, and he was embarrassed the minute he spoke._ _

__"No," Oberon said, sounding faintly surprised. He smiled a little, and said, "I’ve been watching this, over and over. I’m happy with the way it worked, and I wanted you to see it."_ _

__He reached over from behind Leander. His hair hung over the boy's shoulder. Leander closed his eyes, tried to edge away without being obvious. Oberon either ignored that or didn’t notice it. He dropped a disc into the drive chute and selected play._ _

__The screen went black, flashed a series of numbers, then a name. Dr. Edgar Nolan. A picture assembled itself from random points of color. Leander recognized him immediately. The man’s face instantly made him feel sickly furious. "That's the doctor who--"_ _

__"I know," Oberon said, quietly. "Watch."_ _

__Another name. Jamison Curn. A photograph of the policeman who'd stunned him. Leander gritted his teeth. He’d found a mark from the stun gun later, two small circles on the left side of his chest, where the skin was dry and peeling. An electrical burn._ _

__Then, a dim, silent video. It was the throne room. Oberon was in his seat on the platform, facing out into the room. He was wearing the formal robes, painted, tapping something on the armrest that looked like a miniature mace. Behind him, Leander saw himself projected onto a wide screen, set in the wall just above the throne. He was sitting naked on an examining table. The doctor and the policeman stepped into view._ _

__"I don't want to see this," Leander muttered, embarassed, looking at his fingernails._ _

__Oberon's hand closed on the back of the boy's neck, under his hair. His fingers were so warm the boy gasped, startled. He felt trapped, suddenly. "This isn't to hurt you, Leander," he said, his fingers rubbing in gentle circles._ _

__"Please--" Leander squirmed, a mess of questions and nerves._ _

__"I want you to see it," he said, very close to Leander's face, the words textured and intricate. “I did this for you.”_ _

__Leander looked up at the screen again. Oberon's hand stayed on his neck, working at the muscles there. The boy could feel his shoulders relaxing. He wanted to lean his head back, but he had to watch._ _

__The camera panned past Oberon, to the floor in front of his throne._ _

__Both of them were held down, kneeling, arms restrained, mouths bound._ _

__Dr. Edgar Nolan. Jamison Curn._ _

__The doctor was crying._ _

__Leander thought one of the guards might be Theren, but they all had their faceplates down, and he couldn't be sure._ _

__The Oberon on the screen stood, and the projection of Leander struggling splattered across him. He said something, his lips moving silently, and gestured to someone off screen with the silver weapon. The camera turned to catch the prisoners being literally dragged out--they either couldn't or wouldn't walk._ _

__The screen went to static, and then the picture returned again. They were outside, now, under the orange sky. A smooth circle had been cut into the rock, probably with lasers. There was a small group of spectators, dressed mostly in black, with masks against the wind and the dust. At least one was a woman, almost out of the edge of the camera’s view, wearing vivid bright green._ _

__They were holding them down, and a separate group of guards in black plate armor brought the stakes, each one carried by two men. And they started cutting--_ _

__Leander drew his knees up, rested his forehead on them, his eyes closed. He knew what kind of torture this was. He read every bloodthirsty thing he could get his hands on, but he’d never expected to actually witness anything like this._ _

___Real. This is real. He showed them that video to explain their crime--hurting me._ _ _

___So what is he trying to explain to me?_ _ _

__He felt Oberon lean over him again, and then there was audio. The sound was coming in clear and terribly loud through speakers mounted in the walls. The hiss of wind from the planet's surface. The screaming, metallic and frightfully close. And another sound, something wet and soft, ripping--_ _

__The pressure inside him was unbearable, so vast he could not imagine it. He couldn’t take this. He would cry, or scream, or laugh, or run. Something. "Turn it off."_ _

__Oberon reached over him and switched it off. He rubbed his face against the boy's and said, "I thought...you would like it."_ _

__Leander's hands came up, closed hard in Oberon's jacket, and he tried to kiss him, passionate but clumsy. The Septarch almost pulled away, his hands clutching at the air. Then he held the boy's jaw, and kissed him back, hard and deep. Leander was kneeling up in the chair, now, and he wrapped his arms around Oberon and crushed him close, held him as tightly as he could. "You did that for me?"_ _

__Oberon pushed the boy's head back, and bit his neck, hard enough to mark him, but he kept the bite brief, and pressed a kiss to the bruise._ _

__Leander was trying to explain it, trying to find words for the strange suffering he was suddenly feeling. “Nobody ever…cared if someone hurt me…nobody ever tried to get them back for me….”_ _

__"You were brought here for me. Everyone you dealt with from Earth until here was under my control, and they knew that you were mine. Nobody hurts you but me. Not ever again."_ _

__Leander made a strangled sound, pushing closer, but he said, “I don’t want you to hurt me.”_ _

__“No?” This was in an awful tone of voice, sweet enough to be a trap, amused enough to be lethal. Oberon’s mouth was moving just over the flesh he’d bruised. “What do you want?”_ _

__“You’re always biting me,” Leander said. His eyes weren’t working right. His hands came up, all by themselves, and he did what he’d wanted to do since seeing Oberon on Earth for the very first time, and buried his hands in all that terrible long hair._ _

__“Answer me.”_ _

__“I want…to know why I’m here…I want to know what you want.”_ _

__“I want you here. That’s why you’re here. That’s what I want.”_ _

__“That’s not a very helpful answer,” Leander managed. He felt positively weird. His eyes still wouldn’t work. He could see, but everything was blurry, and he just wanted to stay very still, and breathing was so traumatic, suddenly. He felt like he’d been either drugged, or poisoned._ _

__“I think you’ve forgotten who’s asking the questions.” Oberon paused, deliberately, and licked from Leander’s collarbone up to his cheek. The boy only shuddered, and he was holding Oberon’s hair too hard, almost pulling. “Here’s a question for you, Leander Schaiden--do you still want to know what fitted means?"_ _

__Leander made a little frightened pleading cry, deep in his throat, and buried his face in Oberon's shoulder._ _

__"I'm not going to do it to you. I just want to show you.”_ _

__Leander was still. He was hearing his own heartbeat, like something the size of a planet smashing into his ribcage from the inside._ _

__It took her days to die._ _

__He’s testing me._ _

__He nodded._ _

__Oberon pulled him to his feet._ _

__

__Leander had never walked beside the Septarch before. The top of his head barely came up to the middle of Oberon's chest. He had to move quickly to keep up, and he was trying to imitate Oberon without realizing it, trying to move to the same rhythm. None of it felt exactly real. It was like a dream, or like moving through a fever._ _

__Oberon kept the boy's hand in his own, and led him to a door that opened into a pitch-black hallway. "I can see in here, but you can't. Stay right behind me. There's light up ahead."_ _

__He pulled Leander in, and closed the door._ _

__Leander couldn't move. He couldn't tell if his eyes were closed or open. It was a trap. The Septarch would kill him, here, and he would never see the light again._ _

__"Leander," Oberon said. He drew the boy close, pressed another kiss to his mouth. "Just follow me. It's all right."_ _

__Of course it wasn’t all right. It was dark, for one thing, and the corridor smelled…odd. The air was damp, and thick, and heavy, and it reminded him of the smell of soured dirt, or an animal struck by an electrocar._ _

__He wanted to say something idiotic like carry me or let’s go back or can’t you just tell me about it? Instead, he pleaded, "Kiss me again,” holding his hands out in the darkness, open, and the Septarch made a thick heavy noise and lifted him off his feet, driving his tongue deep enough to make the boy gag. “More,” he whispered._ _

__“You’re stalling,” Oberon told him, sounding more amused than angry. “Walk.”_ _

__Oberon led him for what seemed like miles. It was so wet here that the air was sticky, and the floor sloped downhill. Oberon tugged sharply at the boy's hand. "It's here," he said._ _

__Leander heard another key in a lock. Then there was strange red light, spilling out into the hallway, and he followed Oberon inside._ _

__It was happening. That strange ragged joy that had to do with the Fury._ _

__The overhead light was crimson and it illuminated something laid out on a table in the center of the small room. Leander thought it was another sculpture. He moved closer._ _

__"It's iron. It weighs about sixty pounds," Oberon said, looking at it almost lovingly. "These braces completely immobilize every joint. The corset and these bands go across the ribs. It's impossible to take any but the shallowest of breaths, and you can tighten it, here, with these screws."_ _

__He picked up the headpiece, an adjustable iron band dripping with tiny hooks mounted on springs, and a mouthpiece like a flat bit. He tapped something, and the mouthpiece snapped open. "It holds your mouth open, and the hooks pull back your lips and your eyelids. These barbs go down in your ears, and the collar can be tightened until it closes almost completely."_ _

__Leander shuddered. What am I thinking? Why don't I know what I'm thinking?_ _

__He dropped the headpiece. It clattered back onto the table, the mouthpiece gaping like a cry. He lifted the bottom half, unhooked it from the corset. "This was a chastity belt. Antique, from the Dark Ages, on Earth. I redesigned it."_ _

__Two iron phalluses jutted in, thicker than Leander's wrist. They were gleaming dully under stains of something that looked black in the red light. They were surrounded by tiny clamps on longer springs. "The anterior one is removable," he said, and unclamped it and held it in his hand. The boy could tell how heavy it was by the tension in Oberon's wrist. "There are other...accessories, but these are the ones I used last time."_ _

__He looked at Leander, his eyes cold. "Want to ask me again what fitted means?"_ _

__Leander was looking at the mouthpiece, still, hypnotized. "What did Julia do that made you do that to her?"_ _

__"I didn't. Didn't Camille tell you? Her brother did it. Lucius. I gave him a choice between himself or his sister. He chose her."_ _

__Leander was an only child. He tried to imagine having a sister. He supposed it would be someone vaguely annoying that you loved, but you wouldn't like until you were grown._ _

__"Will it kill you?" he croaked._ _

__"If it's tight enough, kept on long enough. You die of blood poisoning, asphyxiation, or dehydration, depending."_ _

__The boy was pale, the bloodcolored light tracing the edges of his bones. He swallowed hard. "Which one did Julia die of?"_ _

__Oberon reattached the phallus, considering. "Fear."_ _

__

__Theren was waiting for him. "Your lipstick is ruined," he said, shortly._ _

__Leander was staring into space, numb. It felt like there was a bird in his chest, wings beating furiously against his ribcage. There was an unbearable, excruciating pressure, like he was struggling against something invisible. He wanted to grind himself against the wall of the corridor, or scream, or laugh. He wanted something, and he didn’t know what._ _

__"I'll have them fix it when we come for you and Camille,” Theren was saying._ _

__Sudden fury, malicious and dark, made him clench his teeth together. It was like he'd just been startled awake. "Camille? He sent for her?"_ _

__"He sent for you both. He wants you both in the throne room. He's staging an...amusement of some kind."_ _

__"Will you be there?"_ _

__Probably, God help me. "I don't know yet."_ _

__

__"Did he tell you what your rules are?" Camille asked, as soon as Theren had left them._ _

__"Rules?"_ _

__"Yeah, like my rule is I can never put the palms of my hands flat against anything. Like this," she said, holding her hand a foot from the wall, like a mime. "I can't put my hand there like that. That's my rule. He wouldn't let Lucius say any words with the letter "e" in them. After he slipped up twice he just quit talking at all."_ _

__His brain was trying to calculate how to speak without using any “E’s”. No love, no hate, no please….but wait. He forced himself to ignore that. "What if you do it in your sleep?" Leander asked._ _

__"I learned not to."_ _

__"But how would he know?"_ _

__"Oh, he knows," she said. "So what's yours?"_ _

__"I don't think I have any," he said. He saw the mouthpiece, again, felt iron hinges digging into the corners of his mouth, and turned away from her so quickly he almost stumbled. "What was Julia's rule?" he whispered._ _

__She was quiet for a moment. "I don't know. Why?"_ _

__"Because...he showed it to me. That thing. The thing to be...fitted."_ _

__He turned back to look at her, but she wouldn't meet his eyes. "Oh," she said._ _

__"What's wrong with him?" Leander asked, and the pain in his voice frightened him._ _

__She did look at him then. He thought she was going to scream. "Wrong? Wrong?" She collapsed to her knees, covering her face. Leander thought she was sobbing at first, until he realized she was shrieking laughter. "There's nothing wrong with him, Leander. He's evil."_ _

__Is he? Then what am I?_ _

__He got so cold his fingers locked into claws, and he ran at the bars connecting their cells and grabbed them and shook them hard enough to hurt his wrists. "Don't say that!"_ _

__She peered at him through her fingers, and grinned viciously. "Evil. Evil," she taunted._ _

__He slammed on the bars hard enough to make them clatter in their moorings. "Don't," he hissed at her._ _

__"What's the matter, Leander?" she said, her voice dripping sweetness. "Did he kiss you? Did he fuck you? Do you fucking think you're in love?" she shouted, her voice harsh and ugly._ _

__The cold crept up into his lungs, closed around his voice. He took his hands away from the bars and stood still and straight, staring at her._ _

__He could see her, jaw forced open hard, head clamped, lips drawn back with hooks to expose the sleek pink meat of her gums. "I think he'd fit you if I asked him to."_ _

__Oh, that felt exquisite. It was as though his voice fit into his mouth for the very first time._ _

__Her eyes got very wide, and the laughter was gone like someone had pulled a trapdoor open and dropped it through the floor._ _

__He was quivering. He kept wanting to smile, and then he did._ _

__It made her cringe. "Leander," she whispered. "Not you."_ _

__"You watch your mouth, Camille," he said, very softly. "He doesn't like you, and I don't think I do either."_ _

__

__**small cruelties** _ _

__

__Oberon stumbled into the hallway and closed the door. He was starving and empty and wanted darkness more than he ever had in his life._ _

__The look on his face. He was itching to touch it. He didn't want to know what she died of. He wanted to know what felt like._ _

__The Zoo was quiet. It usually was, at that time of night._ _

__There was the long hallway, with the solid doors along one side. Cayle, the resident doctor, was dozing in the single chair. An electric notepad was resting forgotten on his knee, displaying a diagram of the occipital lobe._ _

__"Cayle."_ _

__The doctor woke instantly. It was a necessary reflex in his line of work. "I thought you'd be here much later than this."_ _

__I would have been, but I... "Are any of them ready?"_ _

__"I gave Four a full dose half an hour ago--"_ _

__"No. Not Four." Even numbers were boys. "How's Seven?"_ _

__Cayle pushed up his glasses. Nearsightedness could have been engineered out of him long ago, or he could have worn implants, but he insisted on wearing glasses. Real ones. With glass in them. "Seven...ah, I thought you wanted her kept for--"_ _

__"I'm not going that far. I just want to talk to her." What kind of conversation would that be? Said the spider to the fly..._ _

__His hands were shaking. He needed to fix. Cayle had assured him that was psychological, an illusion of an addiction that his body was incapable of forming. He'd offered to install a permanent implant that would release a steady dosage, or could be activated by a tiny keypad. Oberon had refused. He liked the romance of needles, the physical act of shooting up. He supposed it was the same kind of fetish that made Cayle cling to those eyeglasses._ _

__"Should I dose her?"_ _

__"How long does it take to work?"_ _

__Cayle did calculations in his head. Body mass, blood sugar levels, how much he could use without risking unconsciousness... "About fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty."_ _

__Oberon nodded once._ _

__Cayle reached under his chair for his kit. It was a clever little chemical of his own design. It relaxed the muscles without inducing sleep or dizziness, and it had absolutely no effect on perception of pain. Oberon knew. He had tried it on himself._ _

__Cayle went into the seventh door down, and closed it behind him._ _

__Silence._ _

__Then a wail, that rose in pitch until it struck hysteria, and stopped._ _

__Oberon leaned against the wall, and thought, she's run out of breath, and her throat closed on her. Any minute now she'll draw another breath and absolutely SCREAM._ _

__She did._ _

__He closed his eyes. Like clockwork. They did that until they were seven or eight. He was grinding his hips, friction against air._ _

__Cayle stepped out again, wobbling an empty syringe between his thumb and forefinger. "Do you want this?"_ _

__Oberon waved it away. He had syringes. There was nothing special about that one. "Is the camera on?"_ _

__"Isn't it always?" Cayle said, his voice dry and vaguely amused._ _

__

__He closed and locked the door behind him._ _

__The room was nothing like the rest of the Sphere. No stone blocks, no torches. The walls were off-white, and the floor was carpeted. There were toys scattered underfoot, a child-size computer unit, and a bed with a fluffy white bedcover. The light was electric, set in the center of the ceiling. It could have been a child's bedroom anywhere on Earth._ _

__The girl was sitting on the bed, her face streaked with tears, sulking at a bandage on her thigh. She was dressed in the standard silk, a pale blue dress with no sleeves. She looked up at him, and he could tell she was afraid._ _

__He sat down on the floor in front of her. "Did that mean man do that to you?" he asked, looking at her bandage._ _

__She nodded. Her face twisted, as if she were considering bursting into tears again, but she sniffled and looked particularly dejected instead. Oh, she was lovely. White blonde hair, that cornsilk that never lasted past nine or so. Huge gray eyes, puffy now from crying, and she was tiny. Tiny._ _

__Oberon sighed dramatically and showed her the permanent bruise in the crook of his elbow. "Me too."_ _

__There was a spark of interest. Little savages, all of them. "Did it hurt?"_ _

__He nodded gravely._ _

__"Did you cry?"_ _

__"Yes. I did. I think I cried for a whole hour."_ _

__She thought about that. "Did your mom kiss it for you?"_ _

__"No. My mom is real far away. Nobody kissed it for me."_ _

__She hesitated, but she took the bait and slid off the bed, her skirt inching up. She leaned over his arm and pressed a tiny kiss to the bruise. Her lips were warm from crying, loose and damp, and he felt the motion of the muscles pulling them tight for the kiss all the way up his arm into his chest._ _

__"Is it better?" she asked him, timidly. She put her finger in her mouth, sucking absently._ _

__His teeth nearly went through his lip. "It's much better. Thank you very much. Did anybody kiss yours?"_ _

__She shook her head no. He leaned over and pressed a kiss over the little plastic bandage. She smelled like milk, and honey, and little kid sweat, and his tongue filled his entire mouth in fury at being closed up behind his teeth._ _

__"You have pretty hair," she observed. He supposed he did. It was coal black and straight as rain, almost down to his waist. "But your eyes are scary."_ _

__"He did that, too," he said, pointing at the door. It wasn't quite a lie._ _

__"I want my mom."_ _

__"Is your mom pretty?" he asked. She nodded. "I bet she would kiss you whenever you got hurt."_ _

__She nodded again. Suspected nothing._ _

__"Did she ever give you special kisses?"_ _

__She didn't understand that. She wasn't supposed to, of course. She stared at him, and shrugged. Her eyes left him, went to the ceiling, the floor._ _

__"Well, she must have. If she really loved you she probably gave them to you all the time."_ _

__She mumbled something. He took her wrist, gently, and tugged her finger out of her mouth. There was a string of saliva from her lower lip to her fingertip. He ached to taste it. Her bones were like air, like the bones of an exotic bird. "What did you say, sweetheart?"_ _

__"She only gave me one kind of kiss."_ _

__"What kind?"_ _

__She fell for that, too. "Like this," she said, and kissed him closelipped on his cheek. Her mouth was wet from her persistent chewing of her fingers. He inhaled deeply. Her hair brushed his face like cobwebs, and it hurt him, like the slash of a whip._ _

__He gritted his teeth. Not yet._ _

__"That's the only kind of kiss she gave you?"_ _

__She nodded again, still blissfully ignorant._ _

__He buried his face in his hands, and did not move. He sat that way until he felt her hands in his hair, tiny little sticky fingers, tugging on the ends of it. This time the sensation went straight down, into his groin, and he drew up his knees. He hadn't fixed on purpose. It made him vicious, the hunger. Craving. Appetite._ _

__"What's the matter? Are you crying, Scary Eyes?"_ _

__He didn't move. She tugged harder._ _

__"It makes me sad. That's all. She never gave you any kisses except like that?"_ _

__"No. Just like that."_ _

__"Ah, then, she must not have really loved you. Not at all. Because a special kiss, that's a kind of kiss you have to give someone if you love them."_ _

__"But maybe I don't remember. What's it like?"_ _

__He stared at her, made his face skeptical and arrogant. "I don't know...maybe you're too little."_ _

__She stomped her foot. Actually stomped her little foot, and that was so delicious he shuddered all over. They were so transparent. "I am not too little!"_ _

__"Well, if I show you..." He sighed, forced every molecule in his body to pretend reluctance._ _

__"Yes! Yes you better. Show me!" she demanded._ _

__He cupped her tiny head in his hands, so little. There was so much space between her skull and his fingers. He kissed her, lips closed, slow and wet and careful, and then he licked at her tiny tight lips and drove his tongue in. Her mouth tasted of tears and heat, and she tried to pull away, startled, but he held her still, licked at the roof of her mouth, at the tiny smooth pearl teeth, soft and young and innocent._ _

__He made his kiss so deep that she twisted in his hands, whimpering, and then he stopped, breathing against her face, and asked, "Did she kiss you like that?"_ _

__"No." Her fingers were seeking her mouth again, and he pushed her hand away, jealous of the attention._ _

__"It makes me sad. She should have loved you."_ _

__"It tastes...funny."_ _

__He kissed her again, sucking hard at her tongue, and she mimicked him and drove him to fury, and he tore his mouth away from hers, laid his forehead against the elegant hot paper-mache of her shoulder. "Did she at least give you a special hug?"_ _

__"I don't know." She was frightened now, but not terribly so, and she was burning with curiosity under his hands._ _

__"Want me to show you?"_ _

__She nodded._ _

__That was the end of it._ _

__"You have to take your clothes off," he told her, his breathing hard and thick and heavy. He tugged at the hem of the sky-blue silk dress, his fingers grazing the bandage, moving above it to the electric satin of her skin._ _

__

__The screaming began._ _

__The cries were high-pitched, frantic and terrified, and they suddenly reached a crescendo, the sharp bright desperate edge that only meant pain._ _

__Cayle reached into the front pocket of his shirt. He extracted a small plastic case, snapped it open, and took out two little cylinders of foam rubber._ _

__He rolled them up small, and inserted them in his ears. He could still hear it perfectly, only slightly muffled, but it was the thought that counted._ _

__He settled into his chair, his fingers performing an intricate ballet across the keys of his notepad. He pulled up an analysis of the psychological effects of the use of biological weapons in the Second American Civil War, and read the same line, over and over again._ _

__After a long while it seemed to be over, and he loosened the plug in his right ear and listened. No. There was low, hopeless, agonized silence, and the dark rumble of Oberon's voice, merciless and vicious._ _

__Then a choking, gagging cough, and then absolute silence. Then a groan. And another. Then rhythmic, low, malicious gasps, and a sound like sobbing, and what might have been the sound of a blow, twice, and then a frenzy of them, loud and sudden, and a pleading shriek that was quickly interrupted._ _

__He replaced the earplug, pushed at it hard with his fingertip._ _

__Life in the Sphere. He supposed it was preferable to death in the Sphere._ _

__He returned to his text. In the second civil war, political tension and differences in religious opinion led to the unleashing of....In the second civil war, political tension..._ _

__There was a loud crash in the room behind him._ _

__He drew in a long, steady breath, and forced himself to read the second line. ...chemical and biological weapons, the impact of which..._ _

__Hear no evil._ _

__He thought of another Cayle, one who had not had a number after his name, who had said something hundreds of years ago._ _

__First, do no harm._ _

__

__Almost an hour passed before Oberon came out into the hall again. He was stumbling, his eyes half-closed. There was blood on his chin. He was shirtless, and there was something dark smeared on his black pants. His chest was more scar than skin. Cayle had repeatedly offered cosmetic surgery for that. The last time he'd suggested it Oberon had broken his jaw._ _

__He took Cayle's kit from him, rummaged through it until he found what he needed. He struggled with the tourniquet until Cayle pushed his hands away and did it for him. Oberon's eyes rolled back when he pushed the plunger in. He pulled it out, dropped it._ _

__“I need you to go over the implants for me. Full diagnostic. Something is wrong,” he told Cayle, rubbing at the puncture mark with his fingertips._ _

__“Really. And what seems to be wrong?”_ _

__“There are…inappropriate chemical reactions to certain…stimuli.”_ _

__“What stimuli?”_ _

__“Stimuli related to…the boy. The new one. Leander.”_ _

__“Oh,” Cayle said, with no idea what Oberon was talking about. “Did you want me to look you over tonight?”_ _

__“No,” Oberon mumbled. “Not tonight.” He turned, moving slowly past the doctor. ‘The stills. Print them out and bring them to me. Tomorrow. I’m going downstairs," he said, ricocheting off the wall towards the door._ _

__Downstairs was his euphemism for the Crypt._ _

__Cayle watched him leave, sighed, and went in to see to Seven._ _

__

__**memory cage** _ _

__

___Forget about the boy._ _ _

__"I can't,” he said, to that cold, logical voice. “I can't, I want to, but he's inside me."_ _

__It was like that. The appetite. It would start like a small private panic tucked under his ribcage, and it would pulse there, waiting, mocking him, and the drugs only made it worse. Then there would be pulling, and everything would crack and bleach and peel, and behind it all he would see himself looking back. Words became unintelligible, and there was only a vicious damp world, a maze of wet glistening eyes, curious mouths, preying fingers._ _

__It would take him apart if he let it. He would be broken down small again, made young helpless flesh._ _

__Not the Septarch. Not anymore. Only a boy who had never said _wait,_ not at all._ _

__The crypt. Yes. He was trying to go to the crypt. It might be better, there._ _

__It began, that dry droning voice in his head, the same one that gave him calculating, heartless advice. Welcome to the Sphere of Light and Shadow. Not one of you will survive this._ _

__"One did," Oberon said, hoarsely. Then, hissing, "Let's just look at you and we'll see who didn't  
survive."_ _

__

__The crypt was dark and silent and filthy. It was empty except for the body on the wall._ _

__It still wore the robes, now rotted, indistinguishable in places from the matter that had once been flesh. The insignia on the chest was reduced to a bristling mess of silver thread. The head hung back, awkward and broken, the hair gone, the skull almost colorless, like the belly of a snake. The stakes through the wrists and the hands were crumbling. He kept waiting to come in and find it fallen, collapsed on the floor in a broken heap, or better yet, hanging lopsided and crazy from one wrist, one ankle._ _

__Oberon stared at it, his hands knotted in his hair, pressing hard into his temples. This was his monument to his own murderous nature, his proof that he had become the greatest predator of all. Usually, this place made him icy, and electric with triumph. Tonight, he didn’t feel much of anything._ _

__He reached up with one hand, slowly, and felt in the tangle of peeling flesh and mildewed bone. His fingernails tore through ancient muscle like paper, and he hooked his fingers through the loop of the pelvic bone and pulled, hard, but the corpse didn't fall._ _

__He thought about that, took his hand away and put his fingers in his mouth, as if to soothe an unknown pain._ _

__Then, he screamed, and struck out, and his hand smashed through ribcage and spine and struck the wall behind it. He pulled out a delicate crumbling handful of what was probably once lung tissue._ _

__He rubbed it between his fingers, into dust, and looked away from the corpse abruptly._ _

__He wandered in a distracted aimless circle, then sat down, not quite Indian-style, with his legs crossed at the ankles and his arms wrapped loosely around his knees._ _

__"Do you want to hear a story?" he asked the corpse. There was no refusal, so apparently it did._ _

__He watched it awhile, to make sure it was listening. Then he leaned forward, rage twisting his face, and shouted, banging his fist on the floor for emphasis, "ONCE...UPON...A TIME--"_ _

__He cut himself off, drew a deep breath, leaned back again. He was calmer now, or at least holding it in better._ _

__"Once upon a time there was a man named Acharis."_ _

__"He was a genius, and he did a great favor for an alien race known as the Makers."_ _

__He waited for questions. Apparently, there weren't any._ _

__"They were so grateful that they made him immortal, and gave him a planet called Omega. It was a paradise. He lived in a place called the Sphere of Light and Shadow. People came from all over to live in his kingdom. He took the title Septarch, and he ruled over them all."_ _

__Still no questions._ _

__"The Makers didn't know he was insane."_ _

__Oberon stopped, covered his face for an instant. The laughter would hurt if it came, and he choked it back until the spasm passed. He raised his head. "So the Septarch bought himself some children. Thirty of them. Three groups of ten."_ _

__"The first one, it was pure pain. The second, purely sexual. The third one...it was everything. Machines. Games. Chemicals. Electricity. Surgery. Starvation. Animals--"_ _

__He flinched, and the laughter happened in a sickening burst like vomiting, that was both agony and relief. He held his chest, eyes streaming, and let it move in him, through him._ _

__"After every session he would sit the kid down and interview him. Fucking interview him. What was it like? How did it feel? What were you thinking? DID YOU LIKE IT?"_ _

__He stopped again, panting through bared teeth. "And they answered. They had to."_ _

__"There was a kid in the third group. His name was Oberon."_ _

__"After a while, his answer was yes."_ _

__"The Makers found out, but it was too late. They came back, by then Oberon was the only one left alive."_ _

__"So they asked him. What can we do to make this up to you?"_ _

__"And he said, Make me immortal. Make me the Septarch, and give him to me."_ _

__"And so they did. They took what they had given Acharis, and they gave it to Oberon." These words were like a mantra, a fragment of verse repeated so often that all sense was gone, and only pattern remained._ _

__He stood up, looking keenly into Acharis's empty eye sockets. "He was young. He thought he knew pain, but he didn't. Now, he's had two hundred years to learn."_ _

__"He wasn't going to make the same mistake Acharis did. He killed the Makers. All of them. And he killed every living thing on Omega 7-18. Living there, in their paradise. Living there, while I was up here being---"_ _

__The Septarch stopped. There was no word for that, for what had been done. Nothing even close, except maybe atrocity._ _

__He choked out, "Do you know what my mistake was? It was letting them make you mortal again. I should have kept you immortal. I should have kept you to see what you might begin to like."_ _

__

__**amusements** _ _

__

__They came in, and began to paint more gold onto the boy's lips. Two women in formless gray robes went into Camille's cell to dress her._ _

__"No," Leander said, catching the woman's hand with the makeup brush._ _

__"Leander--" Theren began, sighing._ _

__"You said I could ask for anything within reason. I don't want gold. Black and red."_ _

__The woman looked at Theren. “Only the Septarch wears—“_ _

__"Either do it the way I want it, or I'll squirm so much you won't be able to do any paint at all. And he'll be furious," Leander warned._ _

__Theren studied Leander, and nodded. Leander watched until he saw the brush dipped into crimson, and leaned his head back, satisfied._ _

__They were holding Leander's head still, and he caught a glimpse of Camille's back. Her skin was pale as milk, etched with a deep pink latticework of thick scars. She saw him looking and turned her face away, her lips a thin, hard line._ _

__Leander looked up at the ceiling, his mouth suddenly dry. "I want a mirror," he said, and the woman gave him one. He studied his reflection, whispered, "Yes," and gave it back to her._ _

__Theren was waiting, his face set in a mask of straight lines, "Cross your arms behind your back," he told Leander. Leander tried, and he couldn't figure out how exactly to manage it. Theren spun him around and arranged his hands, smoothed Leander's blue cloak over his back, along his shoulders. "Remember to look down, and keep quiet. He's usually in a fury when he arranges this kind of thing," Theren warned. "So whatever he's been letting you get away with, don't try it tonight."_ _

__The corridors were more crowded than Leander had ever seen them. There were guards in black and violet, and other people in clothes that looked like they had been designed for a funeral in space. He tried not to look up, but he could feel the eyes on him, and he would have sworn that there were whispers with his name in them when he passed._ _

__The throne room was blazing with light. So many torches had been fixed to the walls that it dazzled Leander._ _

__They stopped him just inside the door, and dragged Camille past him. She wouldn't even pick up her feet. God, please let me not act like that, he thought._ _

__He looked up through his hair, keeping his head down. He saw them push Camille down on her knees, in front of the throne, and snap a gold collar around her neck._ _

__These barbs go down in your ears, and the collar can be tightened until it closes almost completely._ _

__He couldn't. He couldn't possibly let them put anything around his neck. He'd choke, or scream, or probably faint._ _

__Leander stopped, rigid, but they pushed him forward. He raised his head then, searching frantically for Oberon._ _

__The Septarch was on his throne, dressed in the formal black velvet robes, with his looped cross insignia embroidered on the chest in silver. He saw Leander looking and shook his head, frowning. Leander dropped his eyes again, terrified, but he heard Oberon say, "No. Just her. I want the boy up here."_ _

__He stumbled up the steps to the throne. Then he was there, and Oberon was as tall sitting down as the boy was standing._ _

__The guards were falling into position on either side of the throne. There was a general commotion of people filing into the room, lining up around the walls._ _

__Oberon leaned close to Leander, whispered so that only the boy could hear him. "You look terrified. And the paint is exquisite. I thought I told them gold."_ _

__“I wanted it this way.” Leander whispered, and was instantly sorry he had. He cringed, expecting God knew what. At least you didn’t say “like yours.”_ _

__“The color of desire, the color of despair?” Oberon murmured to him, sounding almost amused._ _

__“Les Miserables,” Leander said back._ _

__Oberon gave him a delighted look at that._ _

__"What are we doing?"_ _

__"Look,” Oberon said, gesturing over the boy's shoulder at a woman in a crimson dress. She had a glittering mask on a beribboned stick covering her face._ _

__She saw Oberon looking at her, and dropped the mask, and made a beautiful gesture that brought her almost to her knees. Her lips were painted deep blue, and were laced closed with neat even stitches of silver wire. A transparent tube ran up her nose, the other end of it looped artfully around her neck._ _

__“That’s Victoria. She eats through that. She has to put the lipstick on with a tiny brush," Oberon told him._ _

__"Did you ask her to do that?"_ _

__"No. That was all her own idea."_ _

__"Who are they?"_ _

__He raised his eyebrow at Leander, grinning at the expression on the boy's face. "My court."_ _

__"Are they slaves?"_ _

__"No." Did he sound, almost…startled at that? "They're my…they're refugees, from Earth, and places like it. You might meet some of them soon.” He glanced at Camille, who had her hands covering her collar and was giving both of them a vicious, murderous stare. "Excuse me, Leander," the Septarch said._ _

__He leaned over and grasped Camille's chin hard in his fingers. "Don't," he warned her, softly, looking intently at her until she closed her eyes._ _

__He struck her across the face with the flat of his hand, hard enough to make her stumble, the chain catching. She turned away from him, her mouth bleeding, and the stitches in her forehead livid._ _

__Leander watched, feeling oddly victorious._ _

__He spoke to Leander again. "Will you sit up here with me, or should I have them bring a chair for you?"_ _

__Leander was stunned by the transformation. He was being...charming. They might have been having a conversation at a school dance. "With you?"_ _

__"Like you did in my room," the Septarch added, and Leander blushed. He wanted to, but he had to struggle to uncross his arms, and then he didn't know where to put his hands._ _

__Oberon pulled him close, turned him around and arranged him in his lap, with the boy's back tight against his chest, and wrapped his arms around him. He was holding him, casually, and it was more comfortable than Leander liked to admit. "Why me and not Camille?"_ _

__"We both know how I feel about Camille," Oberon said, loud enough for her to hear him, his voice thin with disdain. He put his hand high on the boy's leg and closed his fingers hard. "Hush. They're about to start."_ _

__The torches went out, all of them at once. An artificial light came on in the center of the ceiling, leaving a circle just in front of the throne that was illuminated, with the rest of the room in darkness._ _

__Six guards marched in, double file. They were wearing the standard plate armor, but it wasn’t violet. It was executioner black, with the full faceplates like gleaming chitinous hoods._ _

__The two center guards were carrying someone tiny, each only using a single hand to lift her._ _

__Leander caught a flash of white-blonde hair._ _

__He stiffened, knotting his hands closed, and struggled. There was a dim vision in his mind, of tearing himself free, going to her, catching her up in his arms and carrying her away._ _

__Where're we going?_ _

__To hell, in a handbasket, and guess what? The most beautiful motherfucker you’ve ever seen is they’re waiting for us. He has eyes like ink and he's going to..._ _

__Oberon's arms were pinning his, and he closed his knees around the boy's legs so Leander couldn't  
move._ _

___These, here, and the braces completely immobilize every joint,_ whispered the voice in his head, dark, casual._ _

___Oh, God, help me. I didn't know, I didn't know what I was asking..._ _ _

___"Stop it," Oberon whispered to Leander. The boy looked at Camille. She was sitting cross-legged  
on the floor. The gold chain from her collar was draped over her shoulder. She was staring off into  
space, a bruise darkening on her colorless cheek._

__"Let go of me," Leander said, pleading._ _

__"Leander," Oberon warned, his voice silky and dangerous, "I would much rather do this to her than you, dearest."_ _

__“You’re testing me,” Leander said._ _

__“Yes. And you’re failing.”_ _

__The boy was still. His eyes stung, and the place on his neck where Oberon had bitten him ached, suddenly._ _

__Jyana's guards set her on the floor and backed away, forming a semicircle around the throne. Oberon and Leander had a perfect view of the center of the stage._ _

__Jyana lay on the floor, not moving. Her hands and her feet were bound, her face streaked with dirt and tears._ _

__The guards were bringing something else to the middle of the circle; a large wire cage. It took four of them to carry it, one of them struggling at each corner. Leander could see something moving in it, something dark, and he caught a glimpse of pale fingers with long ragged stained claws, clinging to the wire._ _

__Camille sucked in her breath, standing straight and drawn tight, and screamed._ _

__Oberon shifted his grip on Leander, leaned over and struck her again, this time with his fist. She fell onto her side like a broken doll, and lay there, sobbing and screaming whenever she found the breath. He moved his hands back to Leander again. The boy cringed, half-expecting to be hit himself, but Oberon only touched his back, his hair, his attention on his amusement again._ _

__The guards swung open the door of the cage. Whatever it was cringed back, away from the light. One of the guards banged on the cage with his armored hand. He turned his face towards the throne, and Leander was sure it was Theren._ _

__The thing growled and snapped at the guard's hand, and crept forward, sniffed the air from behind a thick mat of dark hair._ _

__"What is it?" Leander breathed, clinging tight to the Septarch's hands._ _

__"It's a geek," Oberon told him, grinning._ _

__"It's Lucius," Camille cried, her voice a shred._ _

__Lucius crawled out of the cage, crouched on his hands and knees, sniffing. He was dressed in ragged scraps of pale leather, and an iron collar with a heavy chain was around his neck. He wobbled on all fours, then straightened, very slowly._ _

__“That’s Julia’s skin,” Oberon whispered to Leander._ _

__“What?” Leander whispered back, stunned._ _

__“What he’s wearing. Julia’s skin.”_ _

__Leander shook his head. That was beyond comprehension._ _

__Lucius stood shakily upright. He was thin as a whip, and the lines of his face under the mess of hair might once have been beautiful. He looked up at Oberon, raised one hand and pointed at him with a jagged fingernail. He bared a mouthful of teeth, filed to sharp points and caked with gore, and snarled at the Septarch._ _

__Then, he dropped back down onto his hands and knees. He scampered over to Camille, sniffed at her stitches, her bleeding face, and her crotch. He made a terrible keening sound at her, and tried to flee back into his cage. The guards had already closed and latched the door._ _

__Leander pushed himself back, hard against Oberon's chest, struggling uselessly with his pinned feet. Oberon sighed in his ear, nipped at him. "Beautiful," he murmured again._ _

__“What have you done to him?” Camille was screaming at Oberon. She rushed at him, and the collar caught again and dragged her back to the floor._ _

__Oberon laughed. He put his mouth on the boy's neck and bit him hard, just behind his ear. It went all through him like electricity, and he thought, What if he hit me? What would that feel like?_ _

__“She’s just angry because she thought she was in love with him, didn’t you, Camille? She came to me  
one night, still wet from him. The next day I caught them both, out in the Garden." _ _

__"Is that why you don't like her?" Leander whispered._ _

__Oberon thought about that, bit him again reflectively. "No. I never liked her."_ _

__He never liked her. He doesn't like her. You're the one in his lap, Leander, the voice said, sly and canny. Who's the pet now?_ _

__Oberon looked at the guards. "Show him the girl," he ordered._ _

__One of them caught the chain at Lucius' neck and dragged him over to Jyana. She didn't move. Her eyes were glazed. She was either drugged, or mad, or both._ _

__Lucius sniffed at her. He began rocking back and forth, frantically, panting, then he threw back his head and howled._ _

__"She smells like me, probably," Oberon told him, his fingers lingering on Leander's collarbone._ _

__"What did you do to her?"_ _

__Oberon only smiled._ _

__The guards stepped back, giving him room. Theren had his faceplate turned to the floor._ _

__Lucius stared at Jyana, shoved at her with one clawed hand. He hissed at her between clenched teeth, leaning over her. A clear string of drool dripped through his teeth, left a dark wet circle on her tattered blue dress_ _

__Then, he lunged forward as quickly as a striking snake._ _

__Oberon pulled Leander tighter against him. "Watch."_ _

__Lucius buried his face in the girl's stomach._ _

__Leander’s breath was sticking in his throat, heavy and frantic. Oberon was hard, under him, and that meant something terribly important, but he couldn't think about it. His mouth was wet and he couldn't think about anything._ _

__Jyana made a thin, wailing cry. It was drowned out by a louder sound, a thick wet ripping squish._ _

__“I taught him how to do that," Oberon whispered to Leander. "Once you're hungry enough, you'll eat anything."_ _

__The girl jerked, caught in a seizure of pain. Her hands twitched in the air. One of them fell against Lucius, grasped weakly at his hair, then went limp._ _

__Lucius shoved his hands into the hole he'd made, pulled out a thick clot of meat._ _

___...virgin reams of color, hidden by skin from all eyes for a lifetime, suddenly in his sight..._ _ _

__Leander made a low, anguished sound._ _

__He had expected a neat rainbow, like the anatomical diagrams in his schoolbooks._ _

___...to see if there were new colors underneath, some bright fascination lying wasted under his blank skin...if he knew that geography maybe he could read..._ _ _

__Human organs weren’t like that at all. There was no rainbow. It was a wet pulsing mass, and the only colors were shades of red._ _

__Leander’s stomach twisted hard. He thought he was going to be sick. He took a deep breath…and realized that what he was feeling wasn’t nausea at all._ _

__It was hunger._ _

__He turned his head into Oberon’s hand, and bit the base of his thumb, hard. Oberon made a quick startled sound, then smiled, and bent his wrist so that Leander could bite harder._ _

__Lucius ate until Jyana was a limp package of skin and bone and hair. He stopped, without warning, leaned up, over her, and stared down at what was left as if he had never seen it before in his life. Then, he curled on his side like a fetus, eyes closed, keening, his hands and teeth smeared thick and crimson._ _

__Camille was lying the same way, making a rhythmic groan that might have been of passion or agony._ _

__Oberon watched her, and pressed a kiss to Leander's cheek. "Get up for just a minute, dearest," he murmured._ _

__Leander tried. He sank to his knees, his eyes nailed to what was left of Jyana, and his hand came up and trailed along Oberon's thigh._ _

__"That's beautiful," the Septarch said, and ran his nails through Leander's hair, before he stood. "Bring him up here," he said, speaking to the guards, but looking at Camille._ _

__One of them took the chain, pulled at Lucius. He wouldn't move, and the guard had to reach under his arms and drag him._ _

__Lucius lay where he was dropped, his eyes wide open._ _

__Oberon reached for Camille. She screamed, trying to twist away, but he had her hair knotted in his hand, and he grasped both her wrists and twisted her arms behind her back, and dragged her over to Lucius, and shoved her on top of him. "Kiss him," he ordered her, pushing her head down. "Don't you love him?"_ _

__Lucius bared his teeth at her, still streaked with blood and clotted with strings of tissue._ _

__Camille screamed again, her voice metallic and frantic. Oberon yanked her hands up to the middle of her back. Something snapped in one of her shoulders, and this time her cry was pure pain. "Kiss him, or I'll break them off."_ _

__Sobbing, she leaned down to kiss him._ _

__Lucius bit through her bottom lip._ _

__Oberon looked back, over his shoulder at Leander. "Should I let him fuck her?"_ _

__Leander tried to swallow, and nearly choked. He looked at Jyana's corpse, lying still in a spreading pool of fluid._ _

__His mouth shaped the word yes._ _

__"Leander--" she screamed, frantic at this betrayal._ _

__He thought, do you fucking think you're in love? and he made a strange gesture at her, like a shrug._ _

__The Septarch gave him a slow grin, wicked and triumphant, and he turned to the guards. "Let him have Camille. Don't let him kill her, though."_ _

__He let her go, gave her into the guards' waiting hands. He went back to Leander, picked the boy up and settled him on his lap again, and whispered, "That was the only right answer."_ _

__Leander groped for Oberon's hand again. He put his teeth back in the marks he'd made, and watched, without a sound._ _

__He was mesmerized._ _

__Virtual games, underground comics, banned books—nothing had ever told him about that noise, or the blinding surreal quality it had to watch carnage in front of you, or the smell, the thick coppery warm smell._ _

__Oberon pushed two fingers into his mouth, gagging him, and he sucked on them, choking, and thought, Now I really am home._ _

__

__They carried Camille out._ _

__Lucius crawled back to his cage, dragging what was left of Jyana with him. He rattled the door and howled until they opened it for him, and scrambled inside, pulling her inside too. They carried him out, too, and there was a splattering of applause._ _

__Oberon pushed at Leander until the boy stood up. "Put your hands back behind you. Don't look up, and don't say a word," he said, his voice like ice, his eyes empty._ _

___Oh, God, for him to yell at me like that._ _ _

___He was trying to impress me. Prove something to me. He's determined to take me apart and see how I work. That's what he was doing to me. That entire...thing was engineered and scripted and acted out for my benefit. To see how I would react. If I would react._ _ _

___He said that was the only right answer._ _ _

___And just how do you think you did react, Leander?_ _ _

__It was too fast. It all happened too fast._ _

__It was over too quickly._ _

__He didn't like that._ _

___What did he figure out about me?_ _ _

__Leander turned without meaning to and looked at the Septarch. He found that Oberon was looking at him already, staring at him with something in his eyes that was fierce and hungry and so cruel that Leander looked back at the ground, quickly, shaken._ _

__"That's not what I told you to do. Is it?"_ _

___Oh, God. No. Not that voice. Not like that._ _ _

__Leander could feel the blood rushing into his face, and he was so cold, so cold._ _

__"Is it?"_ _

__The shove took him completely by surprise. He almost fell, and his ankle made an awful noise and the pain went through it like a burn._ _

__"Answer me."_ _

__"No--"_ _

__Oberon pushed him again, his hand coming hard against the middle of Leander’s back. The guards were carefully looking at anything but them. “Weren’t you finished looking at me, Leander?” he said. The voice was dangerous now. Oberon was in another place, a place like hell._ _

___If I looked back, he'd be laughing._ _ _

___And he would hit me._ _ _

__Leander's hands almost moved from behind his back._ _

__He tried to will the fury to come, but it didn't. He was only alone, and terrified, and outnumbered._ _

__He remembered the bolts in his mother, detonating, and he thought, This isn't a game. It never has been. And he kept his hands behind him._ _

__But it was a game. That truth compass in his chest knew it was._ _

__He just walked._ _

__He didn't think, and he wasn't sure he was breathing. Oberon’s hand was on the back of his neck, and there were guards on either side of them. It had nothing to do with him. He just walked._ _

__

__Oberon kept his face stiff and heavy. The boy was in front of him, still and quiet and closed._ _

__He's falling apart inside. Now he knows what I am._ _

__It was a vast red fury now. Appetite._ _

___What will you be, after this night? Will there be anything left?_ _ _

__He would hurt him. He would have to. He would unfold this child, and underneath there wouldn’t be anything at all. And he would be able to think again, able to sleep again. He would be himself again, and Leander would be just one more in an endless parade of victims._ _

__Oberon keyed open the door to his rooms. "Inside," he said, pushing Leander past him. "Theren. I'll send for you sometime tomorrow to take him back to the Gallery," he said, and he stepped in, and locked the door, and they were alone._ _

__

__**bloodletting** _ _

__

__The sound of the door locking was deafening, immense._ _

__Leander just stood where he’d been put. He looked at the floor, feeling Oberon come closer. He could hear himself breathing. He had never been so afraid in his entire life._ _

__Oberon walked around him in a slow circle. "You're beautiful."_ _

__Leander was trying not to cry, and failing. "Please--"_ _

__"Please what?" He put his hand under the boy's jaw, tilted his head back. “Don’t hurt you? Let you go? Or kiss you again?"_ _

__His mouth was inches from Leander's._ _

__The tears came, then. He couldn't help it. "Don't," the boy said, crying, and stood up on his toes to be kissed._ _

__He felt Oberon's hand move to the small of his back, closing around his wrists. He bent Leander back, and bit at his mouth, mocking Lucius and Camille._ _

___This isn’t the same. He didn't kiss me like this before. It's like he's serious, now._ _ _

__The kiss had become ruthless, painful, and Oberon moved back and whispered, “Tell me what you thought of what you saw.”_ _

__“You engineered that. All of it. You knew how each one of us would react,” Leander said, trying to lean closer again._ _

__Oberon put his fingertips on the boy’s mouth, stopping him. “Except you. I was guessing about you. Now tell me what you thought.”_ _

__Leander held Oberon’s wrist, licked at his fingers. “Will you kill me like that, when you get tired of me?”_ _

__Oberon closed his black eyes. “Not like that. Not someone like you. I would keep your death between us. Make you choose. Torture you for days.” He was moving his fingers in the boy’s mouth._ _

__He bit Oberon’s fingertip, hard, and pushed forward, leaned his forehead on Oberon’s chest. That smell surrounded him again, decay and something dark and sweet underneath. He was devouring the words. “Would you?” he said, his voice muffled._ _

__“Don’t tempt me, Leander,” he warned, his hands in the boy’s hair, now. He was losing control of his voice._ _

__“Today?”_ _

__“No.”_ _

__“Tomorrow?”_ _

__“Stop it,” Oberon hissed at him, and pushed him out at arm’s length, catching hold of his hands, and pulling him towards the bedroom._ _

__“Don’t do this,” Leander said, pleading again. He tried to squirm his hands free, and Oberon turned him and wound his arms around the boy, lifted him off his feet._ _

__It was dizzying, unbearable. Oberon was a sketch of bone and wire around him, impossibly strong, merciless. “You’re hurting me,” he said. He didn’t bother to struggle. He meant it to be an accusation, but it sounded more like a plea._ _

__Oberon rearranged his hold, fumbled open the door, and brought Leander into the bedroom. This door, too, closed and locked._ _

__He set Leander on his feet again, but did not let him go. Leander did struggle then, and Oberon laughed, very softly, pulled him closer and said, “What do you think you know about pain?”_ _

__Leander tried to answer, found his mouth empty, without words. He closed his eyes, invented, “It’s all you seem to care about.”_ _

__Oberon pulled the boy’s head back, wrapped one hand around his throat, his fingers seeking the pressure points at the hinge of Leander’s jaw, and pressed hard and fast._ _

__Leander bit back on the sound in his throat, but his spine drew itself concave, tight and sudden against Oberon’s chest. He shook, hard, almost a convulsion. The pain was hot and strange, exploding like an insect sting, spreading down the sides of his neck, making his mouth wet. He ground his teeth together. I won’t. I just won’t. He’ll stop._ _

__Oberon pressed harder, fast again, and Leander was forced to make a strangled cry. He wrenched himself sideways, as hard as he could. He barely moved. Oberon laughed. “Will you make me bruise you, or do you want to stop pretending?”_ _

__Leander shook his head, silent, furious._ _

__Oberon shifted his fingers slightly, pushed so viciously that Leander did something close to a scream. The pain was over as suddenly as it had happened, and the Septarch stroked down his neck, turned his hand, drew the backs of his nails up from the boy’s collarbone up to the tip of his chin._ _

__Wet eyelashes. Leander lost it, moaned, went limp and liquid._ _

__Oberon let him go, went over to the bed and arranged himself there. Leander only stood, just in front of the door, eyes almost closed, balance unsteady. “You want me to go, don’t you?” he mumbled. His hand went to his neck, hovered there, went back down to his side._ _

__After a long sadistic pause, Oberon made a negative gesture with his eyes, and touched his fingertips to his mouth. Shhh. He said, “Come over here.”_ _

__“I know what you want,” Leander told him, trying and almost succeeding in meeting those inkblack eyes. “I’m not stupid.”_ _

__“Aren’t you,” Oberon said, looking amused. “I told you to come over here. Didn’t you understand that?”_ _

__Leander came closer. Oberon wasn’t satisfied with his little baby step, and he looked hard at the floor just beside him, then back at Leander._ _

__He walked forward again, stopped where he had been ordered to. He felt mechanical, dehydrated, afraid._ _

__Oberon gestured at the boy's vinyl suit, the cloak. “Take all of that off.”_ _

__Leander tried to meet his eyes again, startled, almost angry._ _

__“Now.”_ _

__Ice in that voice. And nothing at all in the eyes. The suit zipped in the front, from neck to waist. Leander dragged his numb hands to his collar, fumbled at the zipper. “I wish you wouldn’t,” he whispered, his eyes aching to look behind him, to the door. Oberon held his eyes, trapped._ _

__“I don’t care what your wishes are,” Oberon said, his voice devoid of expression. Did his eyes flicker? Mockery? Something else?_ _

__He pulled the zipper down six inches, just above his sternum, and waited for a reprieve. There was none. The boy drew in a deep breath, finally managed to drop his eyes, and unzipped down to his waist. He glanced at Oberon one more time, struggled until he managed to pull his arms out of the vinyl sleeves._ _

__“Stop,” Oberon said, his voice a shade less perfect. He sat up, reached out his hand. Leander didn’t understand at first, then reached back, tentative. Oberon grasped his fingers, pulled him even closer, until his mouth was inches from the boy’s shoulder, their hands still closed together._ _

__Leander tensed, expecting a bite. He could feel Oberon breathing against his skin, could feel the Septarch’s hair brushing his ribs. Oberon moved lower, stopped at Leander’s waist. “I can smell you,” he said, so softly the boy almost couldn’t understand him. “You’re afraid.”_ _

__“Yes, fine, I'm afraid.” His voice was strained, jagged. If he bites me there, I’ll scream, Leander thought._ _

__Oberon laughed. “I haven’t even done anything yet,” he said, almost a warning, before he kissed Leander, just above his navel._ _

__Heat. Ice. Terror. Leander sucked in his breath, shuddering, staring up at the dark vaulted ceiling. He knew he was going to be bitten. He could almost feel it, a thick ragged agony. He waited and waited for teeth. Instead, it was Oberon’s tongue, so warm and startling that he made a sound almost like a cry, cringing. “I don’t understand,” he whispered, and he meant it. He was falling, and his mind was struggling to add up the days, to calculate how long he had been here. It seemed important, urgent, suddenly, that he figure out how far away from Earth he had really come, and he knew that had to be measured somehow. Time was the only distance he could think of._ _

__Oberon did not answer. He licked the boy again, a long delicate motion, and tugged at Leander’s right foot until he lifted it, wavering, and pulled off his vinyl boot. The boy understood, picked up his other foot without being told, his hands coming down to Oberon’s shoulders for balance._ _

__“I know what happens now,” Leander said, his voice sounding distant and vague in his own ears. Oberon was pulling off the vinyl suit, and he stepped out of it obediently, naked now except for the velvet cloak. “Don’t you know that I’m afraid of you?” he said, without hope of being heard. “Don’t you know what you’re like to other people?”_ _

__He meant to say something else, something perfect, but Oberon buried his face in Leander’s neck and inhaled, his hands pressed against the skin of the boy’s back. “You don’t smell like the others,” he said, sounding as though he were analyzing something. “You almost smell like you’re sentient.”_ _

__This was irrational, cryptic, and it made complete sense to Leander. “I want to be sentient,” he said, almost pleading, and he moved to wrap his arms around the Septarch, hesistated, and did it anyway. Oberon was kissing his neck, his mouth open and wet. It was unbearable. Some new kind of consciousness was in his skin. He was certain, suddenly, that out of a hundred kisses in a dark room he would know Oberon’s mouth, that his skin had memorized it instantly, or even remembered it from a drug-induced dream. He wanted to speak, wanted to say something like I like this or don’t stop but nothing he could think of seemed to fit. Oberon was pulling him onto the bed, and he couldn’t move correctly. His joints were unhinged._ _

__Hadn’t he been afraid? He was on his back, now, the cloak crumpled and uncomfortable under him. He tried to squirm a little, to rearrange it, his eyes closed, Oberon’s mouth close to his._ _

__Oberon made a low, furious sound, and leaned back and hit him, twice, the blows unplanned and awkward. “Don’t move,” he hissed, and hit him again, this one catching him in the middle of his collarbone._ _

__Leander froze, startled more than hurt. He opened his eyes again, confused, scared, and Oberon caught his wrists, hard. Something grated against something else in his left hand, the pain sickening and stunning, and he didn’t have breath to scream. He gasped, and managed, “I won’t. I’m sorry—“_ _

__“What did you expect to find here? Some kind of fairy tale?”_ _

__Oberon dragged him off the bed, pushed him onto the floor, and let him go. Leander twisted away from him, backed away until he was against the wall. He couldn’t look up. The room was a heavy blur. He didn’t know if he was about to cry, or lose consciousness. He crouched down there, shaking. "Stop it," he said, pleading, but with angry eyes. He wrapped his arms around his head. He wanted to disappear. "I can't...I don't...I can't."_ _

__He expected Oberon to laugh at him, or hit him, or call for Theren to take him away and bring him a better slave. Camille, maybe._ _

__Instead, Oberon looked at him, and said, "Are you really so frightened?"_ _

__Leander gritted his teeth. "You know what? I used to fucking blow up buildings on a planet where the penalty for theft is having your hand cut off. I'm not afraid. And I know what you want," he said, accusing. "You want to fuck me. I know."_ _

__There. The words were in the air, now, sentient and unleashed. No swallowing them back again. No painting over the colors they made._ _

__"Yes. And you want me to fuck you. Come here."_ _

__"Goddamnit, don’t you understand? I can't do this. I can't...live up to you."_ _

__Oberon stepped towards him, very slowly, only a single step, with his hands out, palms turned towards the ceiling. He sank down to his knees, looking into the boy's face. "No. I don't understand. Explain it to me."_ _

__Leander hadn't expected that. It felt like a trap. He swallowed, sent a furtive glance beyond Oberon, seeking an escape that did not exist. He was trying to get his mind around what he was feeling, but it was bigger and stranger than any emotion he knew. He knew all about rage, about frustration, and this was like those, and yet unlike them. "Before this...before here, and you...I was the only person like me. The only one. And now--"_ _

__"Now,” Oberon said, softly, "You’re no longer the only one like you. And it frightens you. Alone is all you've ever known, and now that it's gone...you mourn. You miss it, even though you hated it. It had become...familiar. Safe."_ _

__Leander's mouth was parchment-dry, his throat clotted. "How do you know that?" he demanded, in awe, startled out of his terror._ _

__Oberon only looked at him, his face still. "How do you think I know?"_ _

__Leander let his arms drop, let his hands come to an uneasy rest in his lap. "What do you want me to say?"_ _

__"What do you want? Did anyone ever ask you that?” Oberon whispered, more to himself than to the boy. “People take everything they hate about themselves and make it into a wall they can live inside, and they call it safe,” he said. "Aren't you tired of being...safe?"_ _

__Leander shook his head, speechless, and leaned over until his forehead rested against the floor, stretched out his arms like an Egyptian in front of the Pharaoh. “Does it have to be like this?” Leander said, feeling cold. “Does this have to be so…so hateful?”_ _

__“How is it hateful?”_ _

__“It’s like you…now that you’re going to do this you don’t like me anymore. Like you don’t think of me as a person anymore, and I guess I thought that you did. Or you were starting to,” Leander said, still miserable._ _

__“Don’t move,” Oberon warned him again, softly, and reached out and touched his face, the line of his jaw. “I don’t know how to think of you. I don’t know what I think of you. I’ve had hundreds of you, and sometimes I don’t even remember the names. I don’t really care.”_ _

__“Do you remember my name?”_ _

__“Leander,” Oberon said, almost smiling. “You seem to think I’m something I’m not. You seem to admire me. I think I hate you.”_ _

__Leander understood that. He didn’t exactly smile, but he felt something icy and petrified in his stomach beginning to unravel. “I think I hate you too.”_ _

__Oberon slapped him. Not hard, and not very quickly. Leander let it turn his head, let his breath leave him in a long slow rush. “How dare you understand me,” he mumbled, through lips that were almost numb, and he heard Oberon laugh. "Unmake me," he said, finally, in a tiny voice. "Take it away. Everything. They've put things in my head that don't belong there."_ _

__"Unmake you?"_ _

__Oberon stood up, too quickly, staring down at him in something very like horror, the expression of a man whose wish had just been granted._ _

__"Yes.” Leander sat up again, pleading up at the Septarch, his eyes wild and frightened and determined, all at once. "Yes."_ _

__Oberon reached down, cupped the boy's face in his hands. He spoke very slowly, very clearly. "I will give you...this one chance...to take that back."_ _

__"No," Leander told him. "I won't. I meant it."_ _

__"What you are right now, you will never be again," Oberon warned him._ _

__"Good," Leander said, fierce, unrepentant._ _

__He picked Leander up and carried him back to bed. Leander put out his hands, trying to catch himself, and found Oberon’s shoulders._ _

__The Septarch found the catch for the velvet cloak and unfastened it and pulled it away. He’s burning me, Leander thought, and his hands closed in Oberon’s hair, pulling his head close. He was lost in texture, velvet robes against his legs, Oberon's hair brushing his ribs. "You kiss me," he breathed, and Leander kissed hard, trying to choke him with his tongue. He pulled away so he could speak, and Leander bit at his chin, licking his face, frantic._ _

__"Do you even know what I want to do to you?"_ _

__He did know. Well, he knew in theory. This is why they always tell you not to get in a transport with a stranger, Leander thought. They're afraid it might be someone like you. “I think...maybe you want to put your hands on me, and put your fingers...in me...like the doctor did, but--"_ _

__Oberon laughed, very softly. "Oh, you’re perfect," he said, almost moaning, and pushed Leander onto his back on the bed. He looked at him, intently, then said, "You really don't have any idea, do you?"_ _

__Leander shook his head, blushing. "Maybe...kiss me, and lay on top of me?"_ _

__Oberon did that, and said in his ear, "It's not my fingers I want to put inside you," and took Leander's hand and put it under his robes._ _

__He'd known that. From books, maybe. Though he'd thought it was only done in books._ _

__"Will it hurt?"_ _

__"Probably," he said, his voice rough and heavy. He pushed Leander's hands over his head._ _

__Leander closed his eyes. Oberon was crushing him, and he couldn’t breathe, and he felt his knees pushed up and apart and then pain ripped up into him, and he screamed, pulling frantically to free his wrists, his heels slipping on the fur bedcover. Oberon pushed into him deeper, harder, and the boy bit his shoulder hard enough to draw blood._ _

__The Septarch slapped him, once, then harder. It made him dizzy, made the room blur, and he tried to say, I don't understand, but he made a noise like an animal that wasn't even words._ _

__His hands closed around Leander's neck. "Don't," he snarled at the boy, "If you scream, I'll choke you to death."_ _

___Oh, my god...so long...waited so long..._ _ _

__It has to be this way. This is the beginning. He has to destroy me, first, and invent me all over again._ _

__His body came up off the bed in a liquid arc, and he whispered, "Scratch me,"_ _

__And Oberon did, his nails gashing from Leander's neck to his waist, his hair blinding them both._ _

__Leander screamed. He had to. He was sure his throat would burst if he didn’t. And there was luxury in that, screaming as loud as he wanted, and then he didn't even know if he was screaming anymore._ _

__

__"Leander," Oberon whispered._ _

__The boy was saying something muffled into the pillow. He was curled up on his side, and Oberon had to lean close to hear him. "...liked what you were doing...but it hurt so much...maybe...maybe if next time you wouldn't do it so hard..."_ _

__Oberon got very quiet. "Does it still hurt?"_ _

__Leander nodded, crying soundlessly._ _

__"Where?"_ _

__"Well...inside. And my stomach, and my back...just everywhere."_ _

__Oberon pushed at him until he gave in and lay on his stomach. He kept his knees under him. "Don't. It hurts too much to move."_ _

__Oberon touched him, pushed gently. "Does that hurt?"_ _

__Leander didn’t move, didn’t breathe. "Yeah,” he said, and squirmed. "You could do it again, though. If you wanted to--oh."_ _

__Oberon's thumbs were rubbing circles in the small of his back, hard, in just the right place. "Relax. Straighten your legs out. Breathe."_ _

__"Your hands are so warm..."_ _

__He kissed the boy, in the middle of his back. Leander’s eyes opened by themselves. He closed them again, tried to memorize that single kiss. He didn’t know why, but he wanted to keep that sensation._ _

__"I can show you something that won’t hurt. If you trust me." He licked down Leander's spine, to the end of his tailbone, and waited. Leander pushed back towards him, just barely._ _

__He drove his tongue in, almost viciously._ _

___Oh my god, I never even thought of this._ _ _

__Leander made a terrible noise, and froze, and choked out, "More..."_ _

__He held Leander's hips and pulled him back and pushed his tongue in deeper, and reached under him and slid his hand down his stomach, scratching to his cock._ _

__Leander bit into the pillow, and lost his mind._ _

__

__Oberon slipped out from under Leander's arm. He leaned close to make sure the boy was asleep, then crept into the other room and sat down in front of his computer._ _

__He didn't turn it on._ _

___He liked it. He wanted me._ _ _

___It wasn't rape. Not even when I hurt him._ _ _

__There was semen drying on his stomach, clotted in his hair. He pulled the ends of his hair into his mouth, sucking on it, and the taste made him want to wake the boy up._ _

__No. Not yet. There was part of the ritual, still. It all had to be done precisely. Otherwise, who knew what might happen?_ _

__He turned the computer on. He typed in a code from a file marked FULL CIRCLE, and selected audio only._ _

__It chirped, whirred, and informed him that it had established a connection. He clicked receive._ _

__"Hello?" came a man's voice, rough and hoarse. There was faint static--there always was on an interplanetary line._ _

__"Is this Paul Schaiden?” Oberon asked._ _

__"Yes...who is this?"_ _

__"You know who this is," he said, grinning a rictus at the blank screen, making his voice cold and deadly._ _

__There was silence, and then tension like a physical presence, when Paul suddenly did know who it was. "Bastard-"_ _

__“I just fucked your son, Paul. He's as tight as a boy half his age. I still have his come in my hair."_ _

__Shock. Silence._ _

__"I laid him out on his back and fucked him up the ass. He loved it. You should have heard the noises he made."_ _

__The sound that came through the speaker was inhuman, a roar of grief and fury. "I swear, I will KILL--"_ _

__Oberon's eyes rolled back._ _

__He listened, letting Paul go on for at least two minutes. Sometimes he laughed, and that sent the man into absolute incoherency._ _

__"Jealous, Paul?” he said, finally. He clicked the disconnect._ _

__"Oberon?" came Leander’s voice from the doorway, sleepy and curious. "Who was that?"_ _

__He turned in his chair. Leander was naked, yawning, his eyes bright with sleep, his hair mussed._ _

__Something went wrong, then. There was a sensation deep under his ribs, as if one of the implants was malfunctioning. "Come here," he said, his voice different from what he’d had in mind._ _

__He did. Oberon put his hands on the boy's shoulders pushed him down on his knees. "I want to teach you something," he said, pulling Leander's head into his lap._ _

__

__Leander kept his head on Oberon's knee. The boy's mouth was wet, his skin bright with sweat. "I like that. Almost as much as I like kissing," he said._ _

__Oberon was stroking the boy's face with his fingertips. "Do you?" he said, his voice distant and strange._ _

__Leander reached up, ran his fingers along the jagged graffiti of scars on Oberon's chest. "What happened?"_ _

__Oberon shoved his hand away. "Don't. I know they're ugly."_ _

__Leander knelt up, took Oberon's face in his hands. "Stop saying that,” he ordered. "There's nothing ugly about you.” And he leaned over, and kissed the marred skin of Oberon’s chest._ _

__There was a brief fierce tangle in the Septarch’s mind. Kill him. Choke him. Break him. Don’t allow this._ _

__Oberon moved his hands out of the boy's way, and let him._ _

___He cares about this. He's trying to comfort me._ _ _

___No one ever tried to comfort me._ _ _

__The decision was made, in that moment. "There's a wooden box, up over the fireplace," he said, after a long time. "Bring it to me."_ _

__Leander did. He tried to sit on the floor again, but Oberon said, "No. Lean your head back. Close your eyes."_ _

__The boy heard the box open, and then cold sharp metal was against his throat. His breath left him in a sudden wrench, and he would have fainted, but Oberon said, "It's all right. Don't you trust me?"_ _

__Oberon cut him, three shallow horizontal stripes across his throat, like the marks of an animal. The pain was bright and clear, and something warm and sticky was trickling down his neck. Leander opened his eyes, raised his hand to his neck. They were deep scratches, not really actual wounds. Oberon drew him close, caught his fingers, drew them into his mouth up to the boy’s hand, sucking hard. Leander shuddered. "Why did you do that?"_ _

__Oberon traced the cuts with the ball of his thumb, drew crimson lines down the boy's forehead, along each cheekbone. “Now you’re mine. It marks you as my favorite, my only favorite."_ _

**Author's Note:**

> There's more of this, but that's all I'm allowed to say. Ask for details at thenineteen@hotmail.com
> 
> I like to talk to readers. You're welcome to reach me all sorts of ways:  
> thenineteen.net  
> darkmaestro19.tumblr.com/  
> facebook.com/darkmaestro19  
>  
> 
> Be well and have fun, dears.


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